Small & Fast TheDrummer Models

Quick answer · Updated June 2026

The small, fast TheDrummer model is Rocinante 12B — the efficient tier at 86 tokens/sec and $0.170 per million input tokens. It trades a few points of raw intelligence for speed and cost, the right call for high-volume, latency-sensitive work. UnslopNemo 12B (54 t/s) is next.

86 t/sSpeed

$0.170Input /M

33KContext

Compact, efficient models — the small/mini/flash/haiku tier — ranked by output speed. These trade a little raw intelligence for low cost and high throughput, which is the right tradeoff for chat, classification, extraction and other high-volume work.

Frequently asked

What is the smallest, fastest TheDrummer model?

What's a good alternative to Rocinante 12B?

UnslopNemo 12B (54 t/s) is the closest alternative on this metric. See the full ranking above for the tradeoffs.

How many TheDrummer models are there?

modelgrep tracks 4 TheDrummer models with live benchmarks, speed, latency and per-provider pricing. 2 of them qualify for this ranking.

More TheDrummer rankings

TheDrummer: Smartest LLMs TheDrummer: Best LLMs for Coding TheDrummer: Best LLMs for Design & Frontend TheDrummer: Fastest LLMs TheDrummer: Lowest-Latency LLMs TheDrummer: Cheapest LLMs TheDrummer: Best Free LLMs TheDrummer: Best Reasoning LLMs TheDrummer: Best Vision LLMs TheDrummer: Best LLMs for Agents TheDrummer: Best Open-Source LLMs TheDrummer: Longest-Context LLMs

All rankings

Small & Fast LLMs Smartest LLMs Best LLMs for Coding Best LLMs for Design & Frontend Fastest LLMs Lowest-Latency LLMs Cheapest LLMs Best Free LLMs Best Reasoning LLMs Best Vision LLMs Best LLMs for Agents Best Open-Source LLMs Longest-Context LLMs