---
title: "Cheaper alternatives to Claude 3 Haiku · Undominated.ai"
canonical: https://undominated.ai/alternatives/anthropic__claude-3-haiku/
description: "48 models score at least as high as Claude 3 Haiku and cost no more on a balanced workload. 11 give up nothing measurable; the other 37 name what they drop. Measured prices and independent scores."
---

# Cheaper alternatives to Claude 3 Haiku · Undominated.ai

> 48 models score at least as high as Claude 3 Haiku and cost no more on a balanced workload. 11 give up nothing measurable; the other 37 name what they drop. Measured prices and independent scores.

# Cheaper alternatives to Claude 3 Haiku

Anthropic · LMArena 1194.8 · $0.500/M on a balanced workload · prices as of 2026-08-28

## 11 models are both better and cheaper, giving up nothing.

Of the 133 models carrying both an independent score and a published price at the same delivery mode, **48** score at least as high as Claude 3 Haiku and cost no more under at least one workload. **47** of them are genuinely cheaper; the rest match the price and win on score alone. **11** match or beat it on every capability we hold — context, maximum output, input modes, tool use and extended reasoning. **37** do not, and every row names what it drops.

Dominance is not a property of a model. It is a property of a model, a capability lens and a workload, and all three are named on every row. Scores are LMArena Elo, used under CC BY 4.0 from the official dataset; prices are blended per million tokens. A higher score is not a drop-in replacement.

This page is built from that comparison and nothing else. When no model is both better and cheaper than Claude 3 Haiku, it is not generated.

## Where it holds

| Workload | Claude 3 Haiku $/M | Better and cheaper | With a trade |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Balanced | $0.500 | 10 | 33 |
| Summarise | $0.237 | 9 | 24 |
| Chat | $0.584 | 9 | 34 |
| Code gen | $0.832 | 10 | 37 |
| Agentic | $0.269 | 9 | 26 |

Workload mixes are defined on the [methodology page](/methodology/). Cached input is priced at the cached rate, and reasoning tokens at the worse of the reasoning and output rates.

## What you would be replacing

| Intelligence | 1194.8 |
| --- | --- |
| Context window | 200K |
| Max output | 4K |
| Input modes | text, image |
| Tool use | yes |
| Extended reasoning | no |

A replacement has to clear every line above, not just the score. [Full record for Claude 3 Haiku](/models/anthropic__claude-3-haiku/).

## Better and cheaper, nothing given up 11

Each of these matches or beats Claude 3 Haiku on context, maximum output, input modes, tool use and reasoning, scores at least as high, and costs no more.

| # | Model | Intelligence | $/M | Holds under |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Gemma 4 31B Google | 1441.7 +246.9 | $0.152 | Balanced −70% Summarise −62% Chat −70% Code gen −72% Agentic −61% |
| 2 | Gemma 4 26B A4B Google | 1434.6 +239.8 | $0.138 | Balanced −73% Summarise −65% Chat −70% Code gen −72% Agentic −59% |
| 3 | MiMo-V2.5 Xiaomi | 1427.3 +232.5 | $0.175 | Balanced −65% Summarise −55% Chat −73% Code gen −74% Agentic −70% |
| 4 | GPT-5.6 Luna OpenAI | 1428.5 +233.7 | $0.450 | Balanced −10% Summarise −16% Chat −7% Code gen −6% Agentic −10% |
| 5 | Qwen3.5-Flash Qwen | 1397.6 +202.8 | $0.114 | Balanced −77% Summarise −69% Chat −76% Code gen −78% Agentic −65% |
| 6 | Qwen3.5-35B-A3B Qwen | 1395.6 +200.8 | $0.500 | Balanced same price |
| 7 | GPT-5.4 Nano OpenAI | 1372.8 +178 | $0.463 | Balanced −7% Summarise −15% Chat −3% Code gen −2% Agentic −7% |
| 8 | Gemma 3 27B Google | 1358.3 +163.5 | $0.172 | Balanced −66% Summarise −63% Chat −63% Code gen −64% Agentic −58% |
| 9 | GPT-5 Nano OpenAI | 1320.3 +125.5 | $0.138 | Balanced −73% Summarise −77% Chat −70% Code gen −69% Agentic −72% |
| 10 | GPT-4.1 Nano OpenAI | 1284.8 +90 | $0.175 | Balanced −65% Summarise −61% Chat −66% Code gen −67% Agentic −63% |
| 11 | MiniMax M3 MiniMax | 1434.8 +240 | $0.821 code gen | Code gen −1% |

## Cheaper and higher-scoring, but you give something up 37

These score at least as high and cost no more on the two plotted axes, and lose something that is not on them. Read the last column before switching.

| Model | Intelligence | $/M | Holds under | What you give up |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Hy3 Tencent | 1441.2 +246.4 | $0.144 | Balanced −71% Summarise −67% Chat −72% Code gen −73% Agentic −69% | no image input |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 DeepSeek | 1431.6 +236.8 | $0.101 | Balanced −80% Summarise −72% Chat −84% Code gen −85% Agentic −80% | no image input |
| DeepSeek V3.2 DeepSeek | 1424.6 +229.8 | $0.290 | Balanced −42% Summarise −4% Chat −54% Code gen −61% Agentic −25% | 200K → 164K context no image input |
| DeepSeek V3.2 Exp DeepSeek | 1424.4 +229.6 | $0.305 | Balanced −39% Chat −44% Code gen −57% | 200K → 164K context no image input |
| Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507 Qwen | 1419.3 +224.5 | $0.205 | Balanced −59% Summarise −52% Chat −53% Code gen −56% Agentic −41% | no image input |
| Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct Qwen | 1418.6 +223.8 | $0.350 | Balanced −30% Summarise −40% Chat −16% Code gen −16% Agentic −14% | no image input |
| DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus DeepSeek | 1419.6 +224.8 | $0.453 | Balanced −9% Chat −11% Code gen −16% | 200K → 164K context no image input |
| Step 3.5 Flash StepFun | 1403.8 +209 | $0.150 | Balanced −70% Summarise −54% Chat −69% Code gen −74% Agentic −52% | no image input |
| Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 Qwen | 1384.3 +189.5 | $0.084 | Balanced −83% Summarise −77% Chat −82% Code gen −84% Agentic −74% | no image input |
| GLM 4.5 Air Z.ai | 1382.8 +188 | $0.310 | Balanced −38% Summarise −43% Chat −34% Code gen −33% Agentic −35% | 200K → 131K context no image input |
| Solar Pro 4 Upstage | 1376.2 +181.4 | $0.052 | Balanced −90% Summarise −88% Chat −90% Code gen −90% Agentic −89% | no image input |
| DeepSeek V3 0324 DeepSeek | 1375 +180.2 | $0.438 | Balanced −13% Chat −6% Code gen −16% | 200K → 164K context no image input |
| GLM 4.6V Z.ai | 1374.7 +179.9 | $0.450 | Balanced −10% Chat −20% Code gen −23% Agentic −9% | 200K → 131K context |
| gpt-oss-120b OpenAI | 1365.6 +170.8 | $0.070 | Balanced −86% Summarise −82% Chat −85% Code gen −86% Agentic −79% | 200K → 131K context no image input |
| Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Thinking Qwen | 1367.5 +172.7 | $0.412 | Balanced −18% Summarise −15% Chat −2% Code gen −6% | no image input |
| Mercury 2 Inception | 1357.8 +163 | $0.375 | Balanced −25% Summarise −11% Chat −35% Code gen −36% Agentic −29% | 200K → 128K context no image input |
| GLM 4.7 Flash Z.ai | 1352.9 +158.1 | $0.145 | Balanced −71% Summarise −74% Chat −69% Code gen −69% Agentic −70% | no image input |
| MiniMax M2.5 MiniMax | 1359 +164.2 | $0.472 | Balanced −6% Chat −11% Code gen −12% Agentic −8% | no image input |
| Qwen3 32B Qwen | 1340.1 +145.3 | $0.130 | Balanced −74% Summarise −62% Chat −73% Code gen −76% Agentic −59% | 200K → 131K context no image input |
| Trinity Large Thinking Arcee | 1341.9 +147.1 | $0.378 | Balanced −25% Summarise −13% Chat −27% Code gen −30% Agentic −19% | no image input |
| MiniMax M2 MiniMax | 1342.1 +147.3 | $0.446 | Balanced −11% Chat −4% Code gen −14% | no image input |
| Gemma 3 12B Google | 1334.2 +139.4 | $0.075 | Balanced −85% Summarise −77% Chat −85% Code gen −87% Agentic −76% | 200K → 131K context |
| DeepSeek V3 DeepSeek | 1332.6 +137.8 | $0.450 | Balanced −10% Chat −3% Code gen −13% | 200K → 164K context no image input |
| Qwen3 30B A3B Qwen | 1316.9 +122.1 | $0.215 | Balanced −57% Summarise −41% Chat −53% Code gen −58% Agentic −34% | 200K → 131K context no image input |
| Olmo 3 32B Think Allen AI | 1298.5 +103.7 | $0.237 | Balanced −53% Summarise −29% Chat −50% Code gen −57% Agentic −25% | 200K → 66K context no image input no tool use |
| Granite 4.1 8B IBM | 1291.6 +96.8 | $0.063 | Balanced −88% Summarise −78% Chat −88% Code gen −90% Agentic −79% | 200K → 131K context no image input |
| Gemma 3 4B Google | 1290.8 +96 | $0.063 | Balanced −88% Summarise −78% Chat −88% Code gen −90% Agentic −79% | 200K → 131K context no tool use |
| gpt-oss-20b OpenAI | 1287.8 +93 | $0.055 | Balanced −89% Summarise −85% Chat −88% Code gen −89% Agentic −83% | 200K → 131K context no image input |
| GPT-4o-mini (2024-07-18) OpenAI | 1286.6 +91.8 | $0.263 | Balanced −48% Summarise −36% Chat −47% Code gen −50% Agentic −36% | 200K → 128K context |
| Qwen2.5 72B Instruct Qwen | 1269.1 +74.3 | $0.370 | Balanced −26% Chat −36% Code gen −54% | 200K → 33K context no image input |
| Llama 3.1 70B Instruct Meta | 1261 +66.2 | $0.400 | Balanced −20% Chat −32% Code gen −52% | 200K → 131K context no image input |
| Mistral Small 3 Mistral | 1233.6 +38.8 | $0.058 | Balanced −89% Summarise −78% Chat −89% Code gen −92% Agentic −80% | 200K → 33K context no image input no tool use |
| Phi 4 Microsoft | 1216.8 +22 | $0.087 | Balanced −83% Summarise −69% Chat −83% Code gen −87% Agentic −70% | 200K → 16K context no image input no tool use |
| MiMo-V2.5-Pro Xiaomi | 1465 +270.2 | $0.480 chat | Chat −18% Code gen −21% Agentic −9% | no image input |
| MiniMax M2.7 MiniMax | 1405.3 +210.5 | $0.821 code gen | Code gen −1% | no image input |
| Llama 3.3 70B Instruct Meta | 1274.9 +80.1 | $0.710 code gen | Code gen −15% | 200K → 131K context no image input |
| Gemma 2 27B Google | 1231.5 +36.7 | $0.650 code gen | Code gen −22% | 200K → 8K context 4K → 2K max output no image input no tool use |

## What this compares, and what it leaves out

 - Quality is LMArena Elo, used under CC BY 4.0 from the official dataset. The 95% confidence interval on a difference between two scores is about ±10.68 points, so a gap smaller than that is marked *tie* rather than an improvement — see [significance bands](/significance/).
 - 188 further models at this delivery mode carry a price but no independent score. They are absent from the comparison in both directions — unrated is not a zero, and an unmeasured model is neither an alternative nor a worse buy.
 - Retired models are never offered as an alternative, and a model only competes against its own delivery mode: batch trades latency for price, so it is not a like-for-like swap.
 - Nothing here measures latency, throughput, rate limits or how a model behaves on your prompts. Two models with the same index score are not interchangeable.
 - The models that nothing beats on both axes are on the [value frontier](/frontier/), and every other model something cheaper beats is [listed here](/alternatives/).