Cheapest LLM APIs 2026: 9 Providers Ranked
Real token prices from official provider pages. All prices per 1 million tokens, verified April 24, 2026.
We compared real API token prices across 9 LLM providers. Llama (Meta) offers the cheapest input tokens at $0.05/1M — 50× cheaper than GPT-4o at $2.5/1M.
Full LLM API Pricing Table (2026)
| Provider | Input/1M | Output/1M | Models | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1Llama (Meta) | $0.05 | $0.1 | Llama 3.1 405B (via providers), Llama 3.1 70B (via providers) | ★★★★½ 4.7 |
| 2Replicate | $0.1 | $0.5 | Various models | ★★★★½ 4.5 |
| 3Mistral AI | $0.1 | $0.3 | Mistral Large, Mistral Small | ★★★★½ 4.5 |
| 4DeepSeek | $0.14 | $0.28 | DeepSeek V4 Flash, DeepSeek V4 Pro | ★★★★½ 4.5 |
| 5Google AI Studio | $0.15 | $0.6 | Gemini 2.5 Pro, Gemini 2.5 Flash | ★★★★½ 4.5 |
| 6Cohere | $0.15 | $0.6 | Command R+, Command R | ★★★★½ 4.5 |
| 7OpenAI API | $0.75 | $4.5 | GPT-5.4, GPT-5.4 mini | ★★★★½ 4.8 |
| 8Anthropic API (Claude) | $1 | $5 | Claude Opus 4.7, Claude Sonnet 4.6 | ★★★★½ 4.7 |
| 9GPT-4o | $2.5 | $10 | GPT-4o (API) | ★★★★½ 4.7 |
Source: Official provider pricing pages. All prices USD per 1M tokens. Updated April 24, 2026. See live pricing on ComparEdge →
Input Token Prices: Visual Comparison
Top Provider Deep Dive
1. Llama (Meta) ★★★★½ 4.7/5
Meta's open-source large language model - the most popular foundation model for self-hosting and fine-tuning.
| Model | Input/1M | Output/1M |
|---|---|---|
| Llama 3.1 405B (via providers) | $0.19 | $0.49 |
| Llama 3.1 70B (via providers) | $0.05 | $0.1 |
Open-source. Token prices vary by cloud provider (AWS, Azure, Together AI).
Full Llama (Meta) pricing on ComparEdge →2. Replicate ★★★★½ 4.5/5
Cloud platform for running and deploying AI models via simple API, with 50K+ community and custom models.
| Model | Input/1M | Output/1M |
|---|---|---|
| Various models | $0.1 | $0.5 |
3. Mistral AI ★★★★½ 4.5/5
European AI company offering powerful open-source and commercial language models with a strong focus on efficiency and data sovereignty.
| Model | Input/1M | Output/1M |
|---|---|---|
| Mistral Large | $2 | $6 |
| Mistral Small | $0.1 | $0.3 |
4. DeepSeek ★★★★½ 4.5/5
Open-source AI model from China rivaling GPT-4 at a fraction of the cost - shook the AI world in 2025.
| Model | Input/1M | Output/1M |
|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | $0.14 | $0.28 |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro | $1.74 | $3.48 |
5. Google AI Studio ★★★★½ 4.5/5
Google's free development environment for experimenting with Gemini models and generating API keys for production deployment.
| Model | Input/1M | Output/1M |
|---|---|---|
| Gemini 2.5 Pro | $1.25 | $10 |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | $0.15 | $0.6 |
6. Cohere ★★★★½ 4.5/5
Enterprise NLP platform offering Command, Embed, and Rerank models designed for RAG pipelines and business search applications.
| Model | Input/1M | Output/1M |
|---|---|---|
| Command R+ | $2.5 | $10 |
| Command R | $0.15 | $0.6 |
7. OpenAI API ★★★★½ 4.8/5
Developer API platform providing access to GPT-4o, DALL-E 3, Whisper, embeddings, and fine-tuning capabilities.
| Model | Input/1M | Output/1M |
|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.4 | $2.5 | $15 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | $0.75 | $4.5 |
How to Choose the Right LLM API
Raw token price is just one factor. Here's what else matters:
- Quality vs cost: Cheaper models trade off reasoning quality. Premium models (GPT-4, Claude Opus) handle complex tasks much better.
- Output tokens cost more: Most providers charge 3-5× more for output than input. If your app generates long responses, compare output costs carefully.
- Context window: Longer context = more tokens = higher costs. A 128K context model is useless if your prompts are 1K tokens.
- Free tiers for prototyping: Google AI Studio and Replicate have generous free tiers — start there before committing.
- Open source option: Self-host Llama 3.1 on GPU cloud for zero per-token cost (you pay for compute instead).
Compare LLMs Interactively
See radar charts, feature matrices, and live pricing for all 9+ LLM providers on ComparEdge: