Cheapest AI models (that are still worth using)

It changes as providers cut prices, but open-weight models from DeepSeek, Zhipu (GLM), Alibaba (Qwen) and MiniMax consistently lead on blended price while still scoring well on intelligence. See the ranked list above for the current order.

Not necessarily. The cheapest models are usually smaller or open-weight, so they trade some peak reasoning for huge cost savings. For extraction, classification, chat and most everyday tasks, the cheap tier is more than enough — that is why we filter to models that still clear an intelligence floor.

On just4o.chat every model here is available from one chat, so you can route cheap tasks to a cheap model and hard tasks to a flagship without separate subscriptions or API keys.