Cheaper alternatives to DeepSeek V3.1

DeepSeek LMArena 1419.1 $0.825/M on a balanced workload prices as of 2026-08-28

5 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, 26 score at least as high as DeepSeek V3.1 and cost no more under at least one workload. 5 match or beat it on every capability we hold — context, maximum output, input modes, tool use and extended reasoning. 21 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 DeepSeek V3.1, it is not generated.

Where it holds

Workload	DeepSeek V3.1 $/M	Better and cheaper	With a trade
Balanced	$0.825	3	14
Summarise	$0.605	4	21
Chat	$0.990	4	16
Code gen	$1.21	3	11
Agentic	$0.715	5	21

Workload mixes are defined on the methodology page. 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	1419.1
Context window	164K
Max output	145K
Input modes	text
Tool use	yes
Extended reasoning	yes

A replacement has to clear every line above, not just the score. Full record for DeepSeek V3.1.

Better and cheaper, nothing given up 5

Each of these matches or beats DeepSeek V3.1 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	DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 DeepSeek	1431.6 +12.5	$0.101	Balanced −88% Summarise −89% Chat −91% Code gen −90% Agentic −92%
2	MiniMax M3 MiniMax	1434.8 +15.7	$0.525	Balanced −36% Summarise −54% Chat −41% Code gen −32% Agentic −59%
3	DeepSeek V3.2 DeepSeek	1424.6 tie	$0.290	Balanced −65% Summarise −62% Chat −73% Code gen −73% Agentic −72%
4	Kimi K2.5 Moonshot AI	1445.2 +26.1	$0.432 summarise	Summarise −29% Agentic −31%
5	DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423 DeepSeek	1439.2 +20.1	$0.979 chat	Chat −1% Agentic −26%

Cheaper and higher-scoring, but you give something up 21

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
Gemini 3.7 Flash Google	1490.2 +71.1	$0.750	Balanced −9% Summarise −42% Chat −12% Agentic −44%	145K → 66K max output
MiMo-V2.5-Pro Xiaomi	1465 +45.9	$0.544	Balanced −34% Summarise −45% Chat −52% Code gen −45% Agentic −66%	145K → 131K max output
Qwen3.7 Plus Qwen	1456.2 +37.1	$0.560	Balanced −32% Summarise −51% Chat −37% Code gen −28% Agentic −56%	145K → 131K max output
Gemma 4 31B Google	1441.7 +22.6	$0.152	Balanced −82% Summarise −85% Chat −82% Code gen −80% Agentic −85%	145K → 16K max output
Hy3 Tencent	1441.2 +22.1	$0.144	Balanced −82% Summarise −87% Chat −84% Code gen −81% Agentic −88%	145K → 128K max output
Gemma 4 26B A4B Google	1434.6 +15.5	$0.138	Balanced −83% Summarise −86% Chat −82% Code gen −81% Agentic −85%	145K → 16K max output
Qwen3.6 Plus Qwen	1436.8 +17.7	$0.731	Balanced −11% Summarise −33% Chat −2% Agentic −20%	145K → 66K max output
GLM 4.7 Z.ai	1435.3 +16.2	$0.738	Balanced −11% Summarise −38% Chat −15% Code gen −2% Agentic −42%	145K → 131K max output
MiMo-V2.5 Xiaomi	1427.3 tie	$0.175	Balanced −79% Summarise −82% Chat −84% Code gen −82% Agentic −89%	145K → 131K max output
GPT-5.6 Luna OpenAI	1428.5 tie	$0.450	Balanced −45% Summarise −67% Chat −45% Code gen −35% Agentic −66%	145K → 128K max output
DeepSeek V3.2 Exp DeepSeek	1424.4 tie	$0.305	Balanced −63% Summarise −54% Chat −67% Code gen −71% Agentic −59%	145K → 66K max output
Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507 Qwen	1419.3 tie	$0.205	Balanced −75% Summarise −81% Chat −72% Code gen −70% Agentic −78%	145K → 16K max output no extended reasoning
DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus DeepSeek	1419.6 tie	$0.453	Balanced −45% Summarise −56% Chat −47% Code gen −42% Agentic −58%	145K → 33K max output
Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct Qwen	1420.9 tie	$0.632	Balanced −23% Summarise −57% Chat −14% Agentic −44%	145K → 33K max output no extended reasoning
GLM 5 Z.ai	1445.2 +26.1	$0.529 summarise	Summarise −13% Chat −1% Agentic −28%	145K → 128K max output
Qwen3.8 27B Qwen	1440.8 +21.7	$0.434 summarise	Summarise −28% Agentic −24%	145K → 131K max output
GLM 4.6 Z.ai	1439.8 +20.7	$0.461 summarise	Summarise −24% Chat −1% Agentic −32%	145K → 131K max output
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite Google	1436.5 +17.4	$0.333 summarise	Summarise −45% Agentic −34%	145K → 66K max output
Qwen3.5 397B A17B Qwen	1438.3 +19.2	$0.487 summarise	Summarise −19% Agentic −5%	145K → 66K max output
GLM 4.5 Z.ai	1429.4 tie	$0.540 summarise	Summarise −11% Agentic −23%	164K → 131K context 145K → 98K max output
R1 0528 DeepSeek	1427.9 tie	$0.540 summarise	Summarise −11% Agentic −8%	145K → 33K max output

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.
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, and every other model something cheaper beats is listed here.