Blog · AI Pricing

Best LLM API for Price (2026)

Ranked by input cost per million tokens. All models are callable through a single OpenAI-compatible endpoint on AI24X.

Top 10 cheapest LLM APIs ranked

Rank	Model	Input / 1M	Output / 1M	Best for
1	MiMo V2.5 Pro	$0.14	$0.28	Code, reasoning, chat
2	DeepSeek Flash (off-peak)	$0.22	$0.66	General purpose, high volume
3	DeepSeek Flash (peak)	$0.44	$1.32	General purpose
4	Kimi K3	$0.55	$2.20	Long context (1M tokens)
5	DeepSeek Pro (off-peak)	$0.66	$1.98	Higher quality reasoning
6	Qwen Max	$0.88	$0.88	Multilingual, structured output
7	Qwen Turbo	$0.88	$0.88	High throughput
8	GLM-4-Plus	$1.00	$1.00	Balanced quality-price
9	DeepSeek Pro (peak)	$1.32	$3.96	Peak hours fallback
10	Kimi K2.6	$1.50	$4.00	1M context window

How to use the best LLM API for price

All models above are accessible through AI24X with the OpenAI SDK. No separate accounts, no individual API keys, no provider-specific SDKs:

from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://api.ai24x.com/v1",
    api_key="sk-your-key"
)

# Call the cheapest model
response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="mimo-v2.5-pro",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Write efficient Python code"}]
)

Price per million tokens by task

Different tasks need different models. Here is the best LLM API for price by use case:

Use case	Best price model	Cost for 10M tokens
Chat / customer support	DeepSeek Flash	$2.20
Code generation	MiMo V2.5 Pro	$1.40
Document analysis (long)	Kimi K3	$5.50
Classification / extraction	Qwen Max	$8.80
Reasoning / analysis	DeepSeek Pro	$6.60

Why price is not the only factor

The best LLM API for price is not always the cheapest. Consider:

Cache hit rates — DeepSeek charges 90% less for cache hits. If your prompts share a common prefix, effective cost drops to ~$0.02/M
Off-peak scheduling — DeepSeek off-peak (weekends + nights) is half the peak price. Batch jobs during off-peak save 50%
Context window — Kimi handles 1M tokens. Processing a full codebase in one call may be cheaper than chunking with a cheaper model
Output structure — Qwen Max charges the same for input and output. For tasks with long outputs, this can be cheaper than models that charge 3-4x for output tokens

Try the best LLM API for price

All models are available through AI24X with a single API key. No minimum commitment, no credit card required to start.

Best LLM API for price. One key for all models.

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