Cheapest LLMs

Quick answer · Updated June 2026

The cheapest LLM is Ling-2.6-flash at $0.010 per million input tokens. Granite 4.0 Micro ($0.017) and Llama 3.1 8B Instruct ($0.020) round out the top three.

$0.010Input /M

26.2Intelligence

153 t/sSpeed

262KContext

AI models ranked by input token price. The most affordable large language model APIs, from budget open-weight models to discounted frontier models.

Frequently asked

What is the cheapest LLM?

The cheapest LLM is Ling-2.6-flash at $0.010 per million input tokens. Granite 4.0 Micro ($0.017) and Llama 3.1 8B Instruct ($0.020) round out the top three.

What's a good alternative to Ling-2.6-flash?

Granite 4.0 Micro ($0.017) is the closest alternative on this metric, followed by Llama 3.1 8B Instruct ($0.020). See the full ranking above for the tradeoffs.

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