GPT-5 nano alternatives
5 models of comparable capability, ranked by blended token price. GPT-5 nano stays in the table, highlighted, as the baseline.
List prices checked
Ranked by blended token price
Cheapest first, at three input tokens per output token.
| # | Model | Provider | Input | Output | Blended | vs GPT-5 nano | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GPT-5 nanoyou are here | OpenAI | $0.050 | $0.400 | $0.138 | — | 400K |
| 2 | Mistral Small | Mistral AI | $0.100 | $0.300 | $0.150 | 1.1× dearer | 131K |
| 3 | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | $0.100 | $0.400 | $0.175 | 1.3× dearer | 1M | |
| 4 | GPT-4o mini | OpenAI | $0.150 | $0.600 | $0.262 | 2× dearer | 128K |
| 5 | Cohere Command R | Cohere | $0.150 | $0.600 | $0.262 | 2× dearer | 128K |
| 6 | GPT-4.1 mini | OpenAI | $0.400 | $1.60 | $0.700 | 5× dearer | 1M |
Source: OpenAI pricing (May 2026). Published list prices only — committed-use discounts, regional variation, and per-request charges are not included. Not yet independently re-checked against the vendor’s page.
Questions
- What is the best alternative to GPT-5 nano in 2026?
- Nothing in the same capability tier is cheaper than GPT-5 nano on a blended basis, which makes it the value pick of its tier. Moving down a tier would cut cost further at some cost in capability.
- Which alternative is cheapest for output-heavy work?
- Rank on the output column rather than the blended figure. Reasoning and agentic loops bill their thinking as output, so a model with cheap input and expensive output can end up the most costly option on the page despite looking competitive here.
- Do these alternatives have the same context window?
- No — the context column varies by more than 8× across this table. If you are feeding whole documents or codebases, filter on window size first and only then compare price, because a cheaper model that cannot hold your input is not an alternative at all.