Cheapest AI Models Worth Using

This list sorts by intelligence per dollar rather than raw capability, which is the metric that matters for high-volume production traffic.

25 models ranked · updated continuously

How we rank: Ranked by benchmark intelligence divided by price per million tokens.

  1. 01

    Command R7BCohere

    Tiny RAG specialist.

    IQ
    1175
    Rating
    4.10 / 5
    Context
    128K
    Price
    $0.0375/M tokens
    License
    Open Source
  2. 02

    Phi-4Microsoft

    14B model that punches above its weight.

    IQ
    1245
    Rating
    4.30 / 5
    Context
    16K
    Price
    $0.07/M tokens
    License
    Open Source
  3. 03

    Uncensored LMUncensored AI

    Freedom to think. Power to build.

    IQ
    1381
    Rating
    4.78 / 5
    Price
    not published
  4. 04

    Llama 4 405BMeta

    The open ecosystem's heavyweight champion.

    IQ
    1355
    Rating
    4.60 / 5
    Context
    128K
    Price
    not published
    License
    Open Weights
  5. 05

    Replit Agent 3Replit

    Build & deploy apps from prompts.

    IQ
    1300
    Rating
    4.50 / 5
    Context
    ,
    Price
    not published
    License
    Closed
  6. 06

    Qwen 3 OmniAlibaba

    Open all-modality model.

    IQ
    1300
    Rating
    4.50 / 5
    Context
    512K
    Price
    not published
    License
    Open Weights
  7. 07

    MarbleWorld Labs

    Prompt in, walkable 3D world out.

    IQ
    1284
    Rating
    4.50 / 5
    Context
    ,
    Price
    not published
    License
    Closed
  8. 08

    π0.5Physical Intelligence

    One brain, many robots, real homes.

    IQ
    1268
    Rating
    4.50 / 5
    Context
    ,
    Price
    not published
    License
    Open Weights
  9. 09

    EmberGoodfire

    See inside any open LLM.

    IQ
    1244
    Rating
    4.50 / 5
    Context
    ,
    Price
    not published
    License
    Closed
  10. 10

    Mistral Small 3.2Mistral AI

    Small, fast, Apache-2.

    IQ
    1240
    Rating
    4.40 / 5
    Context
    128K
    Price
    not published
    License
    Open Weights
  11. 11

    Llama 4 Scout MiniMeta

    Tiny Llama, big reach.

    IQ
    1230
    Rating
    4.40 / 5
    Context
    128K
    Price
    not published
    License
    Open Weights
  12. 12

    OLMo 3Allen Institute for AI

    Fully open from data to weights.

    IQ
    1210
    Rating
    4.30 / 5
    Context
    128K
    Price
    not published
    License
    Open Source
  13. 13

    Character.AI C2Character.AI

    Roleplay-tuned conversational model.

    IQ
    1195
    Rating
    4.10 / 5
    Context
    32K
    Price
    not published
    License
    Closed
  14. 14

    HuggingChat OmniHugging Face

    Auto-routing open-model chat.

    IQ
    1190
    Rating
    4.00 / 5
    Context
    128K
    Price
    not published
    License
    Open Source
  15. 15

    OLMo 2 32BAllen Institute for AI

    Fully-open research LLM.

    IQ
    1188
    Rating
    4.10 / 5
    Context
    4K
    Price
    not published
    License
    Open Source
  16. 16

    Nemotron-4 340B RewardNVIDIA

    Open reward model for RLHF.

    IQ
    1180
    Rating
    4.00 / 5
    Context
    4K
    Price
    not published
    License
    Open Source
  17. 17

    Yi-Lightning01.AI

    Fast bilingual frontier model.

    IQ
    1272
    Rating
    4.35 / 5
    Context
    32K
    Price
    $0.14/M tokens
    License
    Closed
  18. 18

    Doubao Pro 1.5ByteDance

    ByteDance's frontier multimodal.

    IQ
    1330
    Rating
    4.50 / 5
    Context
    256K
    Price
    $0.15/M tokens
    License
    Closed
  19. 19

    Reka Flash 3Reka AI

    Lean multimodal workhorse.

    IQ
    1232
    Rating
    4.20 / 5
    Context
    128K
    Price
    $0.2/M tokens
    License
    Open Source
  20. 20

    Jamba 1.6 MiniAI21 Labs

    Hybrid SSM-Transformer at scale.

    IQ
    1198
    Rating
    4.15 / 5
    Context
    256K
    Price
    $0.2/M tokens
    License
    Open Source
  21. 21

    DeepSeek V3.2DeepSeek

    Frontier-tier intelligence at open-source prices.

    IQ
    1376
    Rating
    4.75 / 5
    Context
    128K
    Price
    $0.27/M tokens
    License
    Open Weights
  22. 22

    DeepSeek V4DeepSeek

    Frontier MoE at open-source prices.

    IQ
    1410
    Rating
    4.85 / 5
    Context
    256K
    Price
    $0.3/M tokens
    License
    Open Weights
  23. 23

    DeepSeek Coder V3DeepSeek

    Open coding powerhouse

    IQ
    1329
    Rating
    4.50 / 5
    Context
    256K
    Price
    $0.3/M tokens
    License
    open-weights
  24. 24

    Codestral 2Mistral AI

    Open coding model from Mistral

    IQ
    1321
    Rating
    4.50 / 5
    Context
    256K
    Price
    $0.3/M tokens
    License
    open-weights
  25. 25

    LongCat FlashMeituan AI

    Open MoE reasoning, blazingly fast.

    IQ
    1318
    Rating
    4.40 / 5
    Context
    128K
    Price
    $0.3/M tokens
    License
    Open Weights

More rankings