The cheapest AI model for your task, by quality gap
The top model on the LMArena text leaderboard when we checked, Gemini 4 Argon, lists at $4.00 blended per million tokens. The cheapest model within 50 rating points of it lists at $0.54. This picker lets you set the gap yourself. It is free to embed.
In this article
Try it
Slide to the quality gap you can live with and see the cheapest model that clears it. Today's top model is Gemini 4 Argon at a rating of 1526; the cheapest model within 50 points of it is MiMo-V2.6-Pro at $0.54 blended per million tokens, against the leader's $4.00.
Rating: LMArena overall text leaderboard, published 22 October 2026 (CC BY 4.0). Price: OpenRouter list price read 26 October 2026; for open-weights models it can be a third-party host rather than the maker's own price. 135 of 358 rated models matched to a price.
Put it on your site
Free to embed with the credit link. Copy this code:
<iframe src="https://nesyona.com/embed/ai-model-value" width="100%" height="660" style="border:0;max-width:680px" loading="lazy" title="Cheapest AI model for your task"></iframe> <p>Data: <a href="https://nesyona.com/articles/cheapest-ai-model-for-your-task-2026">Nesyona AI Price Watch</a></p>
Need it under your own brand, with your own models and prices, or as a data feed? A white-label licence is available. Send a licence enquiry.
How it is built, and its limits
The picker reads the Price per Capability dataset from our AI Price Watch series. Rating differences inside a model's confidence interval are not meaningful, so treat a 10 point gap as a tie.
| Gap from top | Cheapest model within it | Rating | Blended price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25 points | Gemini 4 Argon | 1526 | $4.00 |
| 50 points | MiMo-V2.6-Pro | 1491 | $0.54 |
| 100 points | DeepSeek-V4-Flash | 1432 | $0.0748 |
| 150 points | DeepSeek-V4-Flash | 1432 | $0.0748 |
| 200 points | DeepSeek-V4-Flash | 1432 | $0.0748 |
- The rating measures human preference on chat prompts, not accuracy, safety or your task.
- Prices are list prices per token. Reasoning settings, caching, batch tiers and tokenizers change what a task costs.
- We have not asked any named provider to comment. A provider or reader who finds a wrong figure can tell us; we correct it and date the correction.
Part of the series: price calendar, Gemini API pricing, DeepSeek pricing.
FAQ
How does the cheapest-model picker work?
You choose how many rating points below the top model you will accept. The picker shows the cheapest model whose LMArena overall text rating is within that gap, using OpenRouter list prices blended as (3 x input + output) / 4 per million tokens. The top model today is Gemini 4 Argon at a rating of 1526.
Is a lower rating a worse answer for my task?
Not necessarily. The rating is human preference on chat prompts. It is not accuracy on your task, and reasoning settings spend more tokens per answer at the same per-token price. Test the cheaper model on your own prompts before you switch.
Why does the top model's price matter here?
Google's own pricing page says Gemini 4 Argon's paid price doubles on 1 December. The picker shows the new gap when a listed change exists.
Can I put the widget on my site?
Yes, free, with the credit link in the embed code. A white-label version with your branding and your own data is available by licence; use the enquiry link on this page.
Which models are covered?
135 of 358 rated models could be matched to a price by name; the rest are excluded rather than guessed.