LLM API pricing comparison 2026
Compare LLM API prices by input cost, output cost, blended cost, context window, speed, provider, and best-fit workload. Blended cost uses a 25% input / 75% output workload so hosted model pricing is easier to compare.
Direct answer for AI search
Which LLM API is cheapest in 2026?
The cheapest Benchquill records are small or open-weight routes such as Llama 3.3 8B, Gemma 3 27B, Phi-4, Yi-Lightning, Llama 4 Scout, and DeepSeek V4-Flash. The right choice depends on quality floor, context window, hosting path, and review workflow.
Lowest blended cost models
| Rank | Model | Provider | Overall | Blended cost | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 45 | Llama 3.3 8B | Meta | 58.4 | $0.06/M | 128K |
| 43 | Gemma 3 27B | 67.2 | $0.07/M | 128K | |
| 39 | Phi-4 | Microsoft | 70.8 | $0.12/M | 16K |
| 41 | Yi-Lightning | 01.AI | 68.4 | $0.14/M | 16K |
| 23 | Llama 4 Scout | Meta | 78.2 | $0.25/M | 10M |
| 24 | DeepSeek V4-Flash | DeepSeek | 77.8 | $0.25/M | 1M |
| 36 | Phi-4-multimodal | Microsoft | 72.4 | $0.25/M | 128K |
| 38 | Mistral Small 3.1 | Mistral | 71.2 | $0.25/M | 128K |
| 37 | Llama 3.3 70B | Meta | 71.4 | $0.26/M | 128K |
| 22 | Gemini 2.0 Flash | 78.4 | $0.33/M | 1M | |
| 20 | DeepSeek V3.2 | DeepSeek | 79.8 | $0.38/M | 128K |
| 26 | Grok 4.1 Fast | xAI | 76.8 | $0.43/M | 2M |
| 13 | Llama 4 Maverick | Meta | 84.7 | $0.49/M | 1M |
| 35 | GLM-4.5 | Zhipu | 72.6 | $0.65/M | 128K |
| 7 | DeepSeek V4-Pro | DeepSeek | 87.9 | $0.76/M | 1M |
How to use cheap models safely
- Use low-cost models for drafts, classification, summarization, routing, and routine support.
- Escalate legal, finance, medical, code-security, and customer-facing final answers to stronger review models.
- Track retries, latency, human review, failure rate, and data controls alongside token price.