≤ 2 $
Best API LLMs under $2 per million output tokens
API-accessible models with an output price at or under $2 per million tokens, ranked by Elo. The real quality-to-cost ratio for high-volume pipelines — classification, extraction, summarisation — where price per token matters more than the last benchmark point.
| # | Model | Arena Elo | Output / M tokens | Hosting | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🇨🇳GLM-5 Zhipu AI | 1458 | $2.00/M | Self-hostable | apache-2.0 |
| 2 | 🇨🇳Qwen3.7 Plus Alibaba | 1455 | $1.60/M | API | proprietary |
| 3 | 🇨🇳DeepSeek V3.2 DeepSeek | 1425 | $0.42/M | Self-hostable | mit |
| 4 | 🇨🇳DeepSeek V3 DeepSeek | 1396 | $1.10/M | Self-hostable | mit |
| 5 | 🇺🇸GPT-5 mini OpenAI | 1389 | $2.00/M | EU option | proprietary |
| 6 | 🇨🇳Yi-Lightning 01.AI | 1328 | $0.14/M | API | proprietary |
| 7 | 🇺🇸Llama 4 Scout Meta | 1321 | $1.20/M | Self-hostable | llama-4-community |
| 8 | 🇨🇳DeepSeek Coder V3 DeepSeek | 1280 | $0.28/M | Self-hostable | mit |
| 9 | 🇫🇷Codestral Mistral AI | 1240 | $0.90/M | Self-hostable | mistral-non-commercial |
| 10 | 🇫🇷Mistral Small 3 Mistral AI | 1235 | $0.60/M | Self-hostable | apache-2.0 |
Data verified on 4 September 2026Open in the comparator
Method
Deterministic ranking on comparator data: LMArena Elo (style control) first, HuggingFace downloads second for models without an Elo. Prices and licences are verified at the official source and dated. No model is ranked by an LLM.