The cheapest LLM API we track is DeepSeek V4 Flash (DeepSeek) at about $17.19/month on our example chatbot workload. Cheapest per class — frontier (flagship-class): Mistral Large 3 ($82); mid: Mistral Small 4 ($29); budget: DeepSeek V4 Flash ($17.19). All 28 models priced by the same engine as the calculator, ranked by cost below.
All 28 models we track, cheapest first, on one example workload — chatbot, 100k requests/mo, 2,000 input / 300 output tokens per request, 70% of input cached. Prompt caching is already priced in. The cheapest row is highlighted.
| Model | $ input /1M | $ output /1M | $ cached /1M | ≈ $/mo * |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek V4 FlashBUDGETDeepSeek | $0.14 | $0.28 | $0.0028 | $17.19 |
| Ministral 3 (3B)BUDGETMistral | $0.10 | $0.10 | — | $23 |
| Mistral Small 4MIDMistral | $0.10 | $0.30 | — | $29 |
| Devstral Small 2BUDGETMistral | $0.10 | $0.30 | — | $29 |
| Ministral 3 (8B)BUDGETMistral | $0.15 | $0.15 | — | $34.5 |
| Ministral 3 (14B)BUDGETMistral | $0.20 | $0.20 | — | $46 |
| GPT-5.4 nanoBUDGETOpenAI | $0.20 | $1.25 | $0.02 | $52.3 |
| DeepSeek V4 ProMIDDeepSeek | $0.435 | $0.87 | $0.003625 | $52.71 |
| Gemini 3.1 Flash-LiteBUDGETGoogle (Gemini) | $0.25 | $1.50 | $0.025 | $63.5 |
| Mistral Large 3FRONTIERMistral | $0.50 | $1.50 | $0.05 | $82 |
| CodestralMIDMistral | $0.30 | $0.90 | — | $87 |
| Gemini 3 Flash PreviewMIDGoogle (Gemini) | $0.50 | $3 | $0.05 | $127 |
| Devstral 2FRONTIERMistral | $0.40 | $2 | — | $140 |
| Magistral SmallMIDMistral | $0.50 | $1.50 | — | $145 |
| Grok Build 0.1MIDxAI (Grok) | $1 | $2 | $0.20 | $148 |
| Grok 4.3FRONTIERxAI (Grok) | $1.25 | $2.50 | $0.20 | $178 |
| GPT-5.4 miniMIDOpenAI | $0.75 | $4.50 | $0.075 | $190.5 |
| Claude Haiku 4.5BUDGETAnthropic | $1 | $5 | $0.10 | $224 |
| Gemini 3.5 FlashMIDGoogle (Gemini) | $1.50 | $9 | $0.15 | $381 |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro PreviewFRONTIERGoogle (Gemini) | $2 | $12 | $0.20 | $508 |
| Mistral Medium 3.5FRONTIERMistral | $1.50 | $7.50 | — | $525 |
| Magistral MediumFRONTIERMistral | $2 | $5 | — | $550 |
| GPT-5.4FRONTIEROpenAI | $2.50 | $15 | $0.25 | $635 |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6MIDAnthropic | $3 | $15 | $0.30 | $672 |
| Claude Opus 4.8FRONTIERAnthropic | $5 | $25 | $0.50 | $1,120 |
| GPT-5.5FRONTIEROpenAI | $5 | $30 | $0.50 | $1,270 |
| Claude Fable 5FRONTIERAnthropic | $10 | $50 | $1 | $2,240 |
| GPT-5.5 ProFRONTIEROpenAI | $30 | $180 | — | $11,400 |
* Same engine as the calculator. Your real number depends on volume, token mix and cache share — tier (frontier / mid / budget) is our editorial class, not a benchmark.