How many frontier LLM models are available?

There are currently 148 frontier models tracked on Sector HQ. Pricing is collected every 6 hours from all major inference providers.

How is blended price calculated?

Blended price uses the formula (3 × input + 1 × output) / 4 per million tokens, reflecting typical usage where input tokens outnumber output tokens roughly 3:1.

Cheapest Frontier-Grade LLM APIs in 2026

The most capable LLMs available — GPT-4o, Claude, Gemini Pro, and other frontier models. Compare pricing across providers.

What is the cheapest frontier-grade LLM?

The cheapest frontier-grade LLM API is DeepSeek R1 0528 Qwen3 8B via Novita AI at $0.068 per million tokens. 148 frontier models are compared across all providers.

Frontier-Grade Models by Price

148 models

#	Model	Provider	Input	Output	Quality	Released↓
12	DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.2 Exp Open	Deepinfra	$0.210	$0.320	Frontier	Dec 1
16	DeepSeek V3.2	Deepinfra	$0.260	$0.380	Frontier	Dec 1
33	DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale	OpenRouter*	$0.480	$1.44	Frontier	Dec 1
38	accounts/fireworks/models/deepseek-v3p2	Fireworks AI	$0.560	$1.68	Frontier	Dec 1
32	GPT 5.1 Codex Mini	OpenAI	$0.250	$2.00	Frontier	Nov 13
31	GPT 5 Mini	Replicate	$0.250	$2.00	Frontier	Aug 7
28	Nex AGI: DeepSeek V3.1 Nex N1	OpenRouter*	$0.324	$1.20	Frontier	Jun 1
1	DeepSeek R1 0528 Qwen3 8B	Novita AI	$0.060	$0.090	Frontier	May 28
9	DeepSeek R1 0528 Distill Qwen3 8B	Fireworks AI	$0.200	$0.200	Frontier	May 28
22	DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus Open	Deepinfra	$0.210	$0.790	Frontier	May 28
23	DeepSeek V3.1	Deepinfra	$0.210	$0.790	Frontier	May 28
24	DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus (exacto) Open	OpenRouter*	$0.252	$0.948	Frontier	May 28
39	accounts/fireworks/models/deepseek-v3p1	Fireworks AI	$0.560	$1.68	Frontier	May 28
48	DeepSeek: R1 0528 Open	Deepinfra	$0.500	$2.15	Frontier	May 28
36	mistral-large-3	Azure OpenAI	$0.500	$1.50	Frontier	May 7
14	Gemini 2.5 Flash Preview 04 17	Google	$0.150	$0.600	Frontier	Apr 17
40	Gemini 2.5 Flash Preview 05 20	Google	$0.300	$2.50	Frontier	Apr 17
41	Google: Gemini 2.5 Flash Image (Nano Banana)	Google	$0.300	$2.50	Frontier	Apr 17
42	Gemini 2.5 Flash Native Audio Preview 12 2025	Google	$0.300	$2.50	Frontier	Apr 17
43	Gemini 2.5 Flash Native Audio Latest	Google	$0.300	$2.50	Frontier	Apr 17
44	Google: Gemini 2.5 Flash	Deepinfra	$0.300	$2.50	Frontier	Apr 17
45	Gemini 2.5 Flash Native Audio Preview 09 2025	Google	$0.300	$2.50	Frontier	Apr 17
46	Gemini 2.5 Flash Preview 09 2025	Google	$0.300	$2.50	Frontier	Apr 17
47	Gemini 2.5 Flash Preview TTS	Google	$0.300	$2.50	Frontier	Apr 17
4	Llama 4 Scout 17B 16e Instruct	Deepinfra	$0.080	$0.300	Frontier	Apr 5
13	Llama 4 Maverick 17B 128e Instruct Fp8	Deepinfra	$0.150	$0.600	Frontier	Apr 5
17	Llama 4 Maverick 17B 128E Instruct	Groq	$0.200	$0.600	Frontier	Apr 5
19	Grok 3 Mini Latest	xAI	$0.300	$0.500	Frontier	Feb 17
20	Grok 3 Mini	xAI	$0.300	$0.500	Frontier	Feb 17
21	Grok 3 Mini Beta	xAI	$0.300	$0.500	Frontier	Feb 17
2	DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5b	Fireworks AI	$0.100	$0.100	Frontier	Jan 20
5	DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B	Novita AI	$0.150	$0.150	Frontier	Jan 20
10	DeepSeek R1 Distill Llama 8B	Fireworks AI	$0.200	$0.200	Frontier	Jan 20
11	DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 7B	Fireworks AI	$0.200	$0.200	Frontier	Jan 20
15	DeepSeek: R1 Distill Qwen 32B 32BOpen	Deepinfra	$0.270	$0.270	Frontier	Jan 20
26	TNG: DeepSeek R1T2 Chimera	OpenRouter*	$0.300	$1.02	Frontier	Jan 20
34	DeepSeek: R1 Distill Llama 70B 70BOpen	Deepinfra	$0.700	$0.800	Frontier	Jan 20
49	DeepSeek R1 Basic	Fireworks AI	$0.550	$2.19	Frontier	Jan 20
50	DeepSeek R1	DeepSeek	$0.550	$2.19	Frontier	Jan 20
18	DeepSeek V3 0324	Deepinfra	$0.200	$0.770	Frontier	Dec 26
25	DeepSeek V3	Deepinfra	$0.320	$0.890	Frontier	Dec 26
6	Gemini 2.0 Flash Preview Image Generation	Google	$0.100	$0.400	Frontier	Dec 11
7	Gemini 2.0 Flash	Google	$0.100	$0.400	Frontier	Dec 11
8	Google: Gemini 2.0 Flash	Google	$0.100	$0.400	Frontier	Dec 11
30	Gemini 2.0 Flash Live 001	Google	$0.350	$1.50	Frontier	Dec 11
3	accounts/fireworks/models/llama-v3p1-405b-instruct-long	Fireworks AI	$0.100	$0.100	Frontier	Jul 23
37	Meta Llama 3.1 405B Instruct 405B	Deepinfra	$0.800	$0.800	Frontier	Jul 23
35	Mistral Large 3 675B Instruct	AWS Bedrock	$0.500	$1.50	Frontier	Feb 26
27	meta-llama/Llama-4-Maverick-17B-128E-Instruct-Turbo	Deepinfra	$0.500	$0.500	Frontier	Feb 23
29	deepseek/deepseek-v3-turbo	Novita AI	$0.400	$1.30	Frontier	Feb 23

* Prices include ~20% OpenRouter platform fee (verified against actual billing).

All Models Open Weight Chat Embedding

Frequently Asked Questions

The cheapest frontier-grade LLM API is DeepSeek R1 0528 Qwen3 8B via Novita AI at $0.068 per million tokens (blended rate). There are 148 frontier models available.