What is the cheapest LLM API tier?

The cheapest tier is "good" with the current leader being Qwen3 4B at Free per million tokens (blended).

How is the price frontier calculated?

The price frontier tracks the cheapest available blended price per million tokens within each quality tier (budget, good, strong, frontier) over time. Blended price uses a 3:1 input-to-output ratio.

LLM API Price Trends — The Race to Zero

Track how LLM API prices are evolving across quality tiers. The chart below shows the cheapest available blended price per million tokens over the last 90 days.

How fast are LLM API prices falling?

The cheapest LLM API currently costs Free per million tokens (Qwen3 4B). Prices have been dropping steadily as providers compete on cost and new efficient models launch.

90-Day Price Frontier

Shows the cheapest blended price per million tokens within each quality tier over time.

Current Tier Leaders

good

Free

Qwen3 4B

budget

$0.0063

Meta: Llama 3.2 1B Instruct

strong

$0.056

Gemini 1.5 Flash

frontier

$0.068

DeepSeek R1 0528 Qwen3 8B

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. LLM API prices have been falling consistently across all quality tiers. Competition between providers like DeepInfra, Together AI, Groq, and OpenRouter drives prices lower as new models launch and inference infrastructure improves.