Cheapest Paid AI Models

The cheapest paid AI model right now is Mistral: Mistral Nemo at $0.03 per million output tokens ($0.02/1M input). In total, 50 models cost under $1 per million output tokens — for context, a million tokens is roughly 750,000 words of AI output, so budget models make high-volume drafting, summarizing, and coding assistance close to free.

Prices below are pulled live from CoreAI's catalog and ranked by output cost, since output tokens dominate the bill in most chat workloads. All of these models are available in the CoreAI app under one subscription — no separate API keys needed.

ModelProviderContextInput $/1MOutput $/1MCapabilities
Mistral: Mistral Nemo Mistral AI 131K $0.02 $0.03
Sao10K: Llama 3 8B Lunaris Sao10k 8K $0.04 $0.05
MythoMax 13B Gryphe 4K $0.06 $0.06
Ling-3.0-flash Inclusionai 262K $0.02 $0.06 Reasoning
Mistral: Mistral Small 3 Mistral AI 33K $0.05 $0.08
Meta: Llama 3.1 8B Instruct Meta 131K $0.05 $0.08
Nex AGI: Nex-N2-Mini Nex-agi 262K $0.02 $0.10 Reasoning, Vision
IBM: Granite 4.1 8B Ibm-granite 131K $0.05 $0.10
Reka Edge Rekaai 16K $0.10 $0.10 Vision
Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 Mistral AI 131K $0.10 $0.10 Vision
Google: Gemma 3 4B Google 131K $0.05 $0.10 Vision
IBM: Granite 4.0 Micro Ibm-granite 131K $0.02 $0.11
Upstage: Solar Pro 4 Upstage 524K $0.03 $0.12 Reasoning
Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 Poolside 262K $0.06 $0.12 Reasoning
Qwen: Qwen3.7 Flash Qwen 1000K $0.03 $0.13 Reasoning, Vision
OpenAI: gpt-oss-20b OpenAI 131K $0.03 $0.13 Reasoning
Microsoft: Phi 4 Microsoft 16K $0.07 $0.14
Amazon: Nova Micro 1.0 Amazon 128K $0.04 $0.14
Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B Qwen 262K $0.10 $0.15 Reasoning, Vision
Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 Mistral AI 262K $0.15 $0.15 Vision
Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) Mistral AI 262K $0.15 $0.15 Vision
Google: Gemma 3 12B Google 131K $0.05 $0.15 Vision
Cohere: Command R7B (12-2024) Cohere 128K $0.04 $0.15
DeepSeek V4 Flash Latest ~deepseek 1049K $0.03 $0.16 Reasoning
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 DeepSeek 1024K $0.08 $0.17 Reasoning
OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b OpenAI 131K $0.04 $0.17 Reasoning
Tencent: Hy-MT2-1.8B Tencent 8K $0.04 $0.18
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 DeepSeek 1049K $0.07 $0.18 Reasoning
Poolside: Laguna S 2.1 Poolside 1049K $0.09 $0.18 Reasoning
Meta: Llama Guard 4 12B Meta 164K $0.18 $0.18 Vision
Qwen: Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 Qwen 128K $0.05 $0.19
Meta: Muse Spark 1.2 Contributor Meta 1049K $0.10 $0.20 Reasoning, Vision
NVIDIA: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning NVIDIA 262K $0.08 $0.20 Reasoning
NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B NVIDIA 262K $0.05 $0.20 Reasoning
Mistral: Ministral 3 14B 2512 Mistral AI 262K $0.20 $0.20 Vision
OpenAI: gpt-oss-20b (batch) OpenAI 131K $0.05 $0.20 Reasoning
ByteDance: UI-TARS 7B Bytedance 128K $0.10 $0.20 Vision
Google: Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite (batch) Google 1049K $0.05 $0.20 Reasoning, Vision
Mistral: Mistral Small 3.2 24B Mistral AI 128K $0.07 $0.20 Vision
Reka Flash 3 Rekaai 66K $0.10 $0.20 Reasoning
Qwen: Qwen2.5 7B Instruct Qwen 33K $0.10 $0.20
Meta: Llama 3.2 1B Instruct Meta 60K $0.03 $0.20
Qwen: Qwen3 14B Qwen 41K $0.12 $0.24 Reasoning
Amazon: Nova Lite 1.0 Amazon 300K $0.06 $0.24 Vision
Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash Z-ai 1049K $0.07 $0.25 Reasoning, Vision
Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) Qwen 262K $0.17 $0.25 Reasoning, Vision
Qwen: Qwen3.5-Flash Qwen 1000K $0.07 $0.26 Reasoning, Vision
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 (batch) DeepSeek 1049K $0.14 $0.28 Reasoning
Xiaomi: MiMo-V2.5 Xiaomi 1049K $0.14 $0.28 Reasoning, Vision
Qwen: Qwen3 Coder 30B A3B Instruct Qwen 262K $0.07 $0.28

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the cheapest AI model in 2026?

Mistral: Mistral Nemo is currently the cheapest paid model at $0.03 per million output tokens. Free-tier models cost nothing at all — see CoreAI's free AI models page for those.

How is AI model pricing calculated?

Models are priced per token — roughly ¾ of a word. Providers charge separately for input tokens (your prompt plus conversation history) and output tokens (the model's reply). Prices on this page are normalized to dollars per 1 million tokens so models can be compared directly.

Are cheap AI models any good?

Modern budget models are surprisingly capable — many are distilled or smaller versions of flagship models and handle everyday chat, summarization, and routine coding well. Flagships still lead on complex reasoning, so a common strategy is using a cheap model by default and switching up for hard problems.

Do I pay per token on CoreAI?

No. CoreAI plans include a monthly usage allowance — you pick any model, and usage draws from your plan's budget. There are no separate API bills or per-token invoices to manage.

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