Cheapest good LLM for knowledge
- GLM 5.3 Flash leads
- $0.50
- models qualify
- 46
Output $/Mtok · read October 21
Cheapest output, $ per million tokens
- Mistral Nemo $0.03
- Gemma 3 4B $0.05
- S Llama 3 8B Lunaris $0.05
- Ling 3.0 Flash $0.063
- Mistral Small 3 $0.08
- Llama 3.1 8B Instruct $0.08
- gpt-oss-20b $0.09
- N Nex-N2.5-Mini $0.10
As of October 21, 2026, Z.ai GLM 5.3 Flash is the cheapest model at or above the median MMLU Pro result, at $0.50 per million output tokens, ahead of MiniMax M2.1 ($1.20) and OpenAI GPT-5.6 Luna ($1.20).
This list narrows the best LLM for knowledge ranking.
| Rank | Model | Output $/Mtok | Coding evidence | MMLU Pro | Coding index |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GLM 5.3 Flash Z.ai | $0.50 | 86.1% | 71.0 | |
| 2 | MiniMax M2.1 MiniMax | $1.20 | 87.0% | Not benchmarked | |
| 3 | GPT-5.6 Luna OpenAI | $1.20 | 86.0% | 61.5 | |
| 4 | DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 DeepSeek | $1.32 | 86.2% | Not benchmarked | |
| 5 | GLM 5.3 Z.ai | $1.40 | 86.8% | 73.1 | |
| 6 | $1.50 | 86.2% | 8.1 | ||
| 7 | $1.80 | 87.2% | Not benchmarked | ||
| 8 | DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423 DeepSeek | $1.9105 | 87.3% | 35.3 | |
| 9 | Qwen3.6 Plus Qwen | $1.95 | 87.7% | 37.4 | |
| 10 | DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 DeepSeek | $1.98 | 87.0% | 54.6 | |
| 11 | Grok 4.20 xAI | $2.50 | 86.3% | Not benchmarked | |
| 12 | Gemini 3 Flash Preview Google | $3.00 | 88.6% | 75.8 | |
| 13 | Kimi K2.6 Moonshot AI | $3.41 | 87.6% | 44.2 | |
| 14 | Gemini 3.7 Flash Google | $3.75 | 90.1% | 69.9 | |
| 15 | Gemini 3.6 Flash Google | $3.75 | 89.3% | 48.3 | |
| 16 | T Inkling Thinking Machines | $4.05 | 86.3% | 49.7 | |
| 17 | Gemini 3.8 Flash Google | $4.125 | 90.2% | 70.5 | |
| 18 | Muse Spark 1.1 Meta | $4.25 | 88.7% | 48.9 | |
| 19 | Muse Spark 1.2 Meta | $4.25 | 88.3% | 65.1 | |
| 20 | GLM 5.1 Z.ai | $4.40 | 86.9% | 44.0 |
How this list is built
Generated from the dataset on every refresh. Nobody picks the order by hand.
Models whose MMLU Pro result is at or above 86.0%, the median of every model on that board, ordered by output price, cheapest first. Free listings are left out: they are a tariff, not a price.
- OpenRouter, fetched
- MMLU Pro (Vals AI), fetched , board updated September 1, 2026