Cheapest AI models by output token price

Ranked on output price alone. This is the table to use for reasoning models and agents, where thinking tokens bill as output and routinely outnumber the visible answer several times over.

List prices checked

All 25, ranked

#NameProviderOutputNotes
1DeepSeek-V4-FlashDeepSeek$0.280/1M tokens1M context · $0.140 in / $0.280 out
2Mistral SmallMistral AI$0.300/1M tokens131K context · $0.100 in / $0.300 out
3GPT-5 nanoOpenAI$0.400/1M tokens400K context · $0.050 in / $0.400 out
4Gemini 2.5 Flash-LiteGoogle$0.400/1M tokens1M context · $0.100 in / $0.400 out
5Grok 3 minixAI$0.500/1M tokens131K context · $0.300 in / $0.500 out
6GPT-4o miniOpenAI$0.600/1M tokens128K context · $0.150 in / $0.600 out
7Cohere Command RCohere$0.600/1M tokens128K context · $0.150 in / $0.600 out
8DeepSeek-V4-ProDeepSeek$0.870/1M tokens1M context · $0.435 in / $0.870 out
9CodestralMistral AI$0.900/1M tokens262K context · $0.300 in / $0.900 out
10GPT-4.1 miniOpenAI$1.60/1M tokens1M context · $0.400 in / $1.60 out
11GPT-5 miniOpenAI$2.00/1M tokens400K context · $0.250 in / $2.00 out
12Gemini 2.5 FlashGoogle$2.50/1M tokens1M context · $0.300 in / $2.50 out
13OpenAI o4-miniOpenAI$4.40/1M tokens200K context · $1.10 in / $4.40 out
14Claude Haiku 4.5Anthropic$5.00/1M tokens200K context · $1.00 in / $5.00 out
15Mistral LargeMistral AI$6.00/1M tokens131K context · $2.00 in / $6.00 out
16GPT-4.1OpenAI$8.00/1M tokens1M context · $2.00 in / $8.00 out
17OpenAI o3OpenAI$8.00/1M tokens200K context · $2.00 in / $8.00 out
18GPT-5OpenAI$10.00/1M tokens400K context · $1.25 in / $10.00 out
19GPT-4oOpenAI$10.00/1M tokens128K context · $2.50 in / $10.00 out
20Gemini 2.5 ProGoogle$10.00/1M tokens1M context · $1.25 in / $10.00 out
21Cohere Command ACohere$10.00/1M tokens256K context · $2.50 in / $10.00 out
22Claude Sonnet 5Anthropic$15.00/1M tokens200K context · $3.00 in / $15.00 out
23Grok 4xAI$15.00/1M tokens256K context · $3.00 in / $15.00 out
24Claude Opus 5Anthropic$25.00/1M tokens200K context · $5.00 in / $25.00 out
25Claude Fable 5Anthropic$50.00/1M tokens200K context · $10.00 in / $50.00 out

Source: DeepSeek (August 2026) · Mistral AI (May 2026) · OpenAI (May 2026) · Google (May 2026) · xAI (May 2026) · Cohere (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 cheapest ai models by output token price in 2026?
DeepSeek-V4-Flash from DeepSeek tops this ranking at $0.280/1M tokens. The full table below shows all 25 entries with the same measure applied to each.
How is this ranking calculated?
Ranked on output price alone. This is the table to use for reasoning models and agents, where thinking tokens bill as output and routinely outnumber the visible answer several times over. Every figure is the provider's own published list price, linked in the source column and stamped with the month it was checked.
Why is the cheapest option not always the right one?
Because a single axis never captures the whole bill. A provider with the lowest storage rate may have the highest egress rate; a model with the cheapest input tokens may be the most expensive for agentic work. The comparison pages model both sides against identical workloads, which is the check worth doing before switching.

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