SmophyAI

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Price-band ranking

Best AI models Under $0.50 / 1M tokens

As of September 23, 2026, Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) is the top-quality model priced under $0.50 / 1m tokens, scoring 41.8 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index among 32 eligible models in this price tier.

  1. #1 Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch) - Quality 41.8 · $0.24/1M
  2. #2 DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (batch) - Quality 39.5 · $0.20/1M
  3. #3 OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Luna (batch) - Quality 37.3 · $0.45/1M
  4. #4 OpenAI: GPT-6 Luna (batch) - Quality 37.3 · $0.20/1M
  5. #5 DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 - Quality 34.3 · $0.19/1M
  6. #6 Tencent: Hy3 preview - Quality 25.3 · $0.29/1M
  7. #7 inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL (free) - Quality 24.6 · $0.09/1M
  8. #8 inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash Fin (free) - Quality 22.6 · $0.09/1M
32 models priced under $0.50 / 1m tokens
#ModelQualityPrice/1M
01Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch)41.8$0.24
02DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (batch)39.5$0.20
03OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Luna (batch)37.3$0.45
04OpenAI: GPT-6 Luna (batch)37.3$0.20
05DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash 042334.3$0.19
06Tencent: Hy3 preview25.3$0.29
07inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL (free)24.6$0.09
08inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash Fin (free)22.6$0.09
09OpenAI: GPT-5.4 Nano (batch)20.7$0.46
10inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash20.6$0.03
11Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B18.2$0.36
12inclusionAI: Ring-2.6-1T16.6$0.21
13Google: Gemma 4 31B (free)15.4$0.15
14DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus14.8$0.45
15NVIDIA: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (free)12.9$0.10
16NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Super (free)12.8$0.17
17OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b11.6$0.26
18Inception: Mercury 211.5$0.38
19Mistral: Mistral Small 4 (batch)11.3$0.26
20IBM: Granite 4.2 8B11.1$0.11
21Arcee AI: Trinity Large Thinking10.8$0.39
22DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 03249.7$0.44
23OpenAI: GPT-4.1 Nano (batch)9.6$0.17
24Qwen: Qwen3 Coder Next9.2$0.29
25OpenAI: gpt-oss-20b (batch)9$0.04
26NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B8.9$0.09
27Upstage: Solar Pro 37.8$0.26
28Mistral: Ministral 3 14B 25126$0.20
29Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch)5.5$0.15
30Google: Gemma 3 27B4.9$0.17
31Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 25124.8$0.10
32Google: Gemma 3 12B3.8$0.07

Source: OpenRouter (openrouter.ai/rankings), as of September 23, 2026.

Benchmark scores: Artificial Analysis (artificialanalysis.ai) via OpenRouter (openrouter.ai/rankings).

Methodology: www.smophy.ai/benchmark/methodology

Token counts originate from each provider's own tokenizer and are not directly comparable across providers.