Alternatives to R1 0528

DeepSeek LMArena 1427.9 $0.920/M on a balanced workload prices as of 2026-10-06

22 models are higher-scoring or cheaper, with neither dimension worse.

Of the 144 models carrying both an independent score and a published price at the same delivery mode, 25 score at least as high as R1 0528 and cost no more under at least one listed workload, with at least one of those dimensions improved. 22 match or beat its recorded context, maximum output, input modes, tool use and extended reasoning. 3 have a recorded capability loss, named on every row.

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 only while a candidate improves score or price without worsening the other under a listed workload. When that comparison no longer holds, it is not generated.

Where it holds

Workload	R1 0528 $/M	Recorded capabilities preserved	Recorded capability losses
Balanced	$0.920	16	2
Summarise	$0.584	21	3
Chat	$1.17	18	3
Code gen	$1.51	14	2
Agentic	$0.752	22	3

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	1427.9
Context window	163K
Max output	32K
Input modes	text
Tool use	yes
Extended reasoning	yes

Preserving recorded capabilities requires matching or beating these fields. Full record for R1 0528, or check R1 0528 against the whole catalogue.

Recorded capabilities preserved 22

Each option has a higher score or a lower price, with neither dimension worse under the listed workloads. It matches or beats R1 0528 on recorded context, maximum output, input modes, tool use and extended reasoning.

#	Model	Intelligence	$/M	Holds under
1	MiMo-V2.6-Pro Xiaomi	1491 +63.1	$0.540	Balanced −41% Summarise −43% Chat −59% Code gen −56% Agentic −68%
2	GLM 5.3 Flash Z.ai	1469.6 +41.7	$0.238	Balanced −74% Summarise −77% Chat −78% Code gen −77% Agentic −83%
3	DeepSeek V4.1 Flash DeepSeek	1462.5 +34.6	$0.182	Balanced −80% Summarise −89% Chat −79% Code gen −76% Agentic −86%
4	MiMo-V2.5-Pro Xiaomi	1465 +37.1	$0.544	Balanced −41% Summarise −43% Chat −59% Code gen −56% Agentic −68%
5	MiMo-V2.6-Flash Xiaomi	1456.4 +28.5	$0.175	Balanced −81% Summarise −82% Chat −87% Code gen −86% Agentic −89%
6	Qwen3.7 Plus Qwen	1454.6 +26.7	$0.560	Balanced −39% Summarise −49% Chat −46% Code gen −42% Agentic −59%
7	Hy3 Tencent	1440.7 +12.8	$0.231	Balanced −75% Summarise −79% Chat −78% Code gen −76% Agentic −82%
8	Qwen3.8 27B Qwen	1440.7 +12.8	$0.562	Balanced −39% Summarise −69% Chat −28% Code gen −19% Agentic −51%
9	Gemma 4 26B A4B Google	1433.9 tie	$0.127	Balanced −86% Summarise −88% Chat −87% Code gen −86% Agentic −89%
10	DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 DeepSeek	1432.1 tie	$0.113	Balanced −88% Summarise −87% Chat −91% Code gen −91% Agentic −92%
11	Qwen3.6 Plus Qwen	1436.7 tie	$0.731	Balanced −21% Summarise −30% Chat −17% Code gen −14% Agentic −24%
12	Qwen3.5 397B A17B Qwen	1438 tie	$0.878	Balanced −5% Summarise −17% Chat under 1% less Agentic −9%
13	GLM 4.7 Z.ai	1435.5 tie	$0.738	Balanced −20% Summarise −36% Chat −28% Code gen −21% Agentic −45%
14	MiniMax M3 MiniMax	1432.1 tie	$0.485	Balanced −47% Summarise −56% Chat −54% Code gen −50% Agentic −64%
15	GPT-5.6 Luna OpenAI	1431 tie	$0.450	Balanced −51% Summarise −66% Chat −53% Code gen −48% Agentic −68%
16	Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite Google	1434.7 tie	$0.850	Balanced −8% Summarise −43% Chat −6% Agentic −38%
17	GLM 5.3 Z.ai	1471.4 +43.5	$0.346 summarise	Summarise −41% Agentic −14%
18	GLM 5.2 Z.ai	1470.4 +42.5	$0.422 summarise	Summarise −28% Agentic −8%
19	Kimi K2.6 Moonshot AI	1455.5 +27.6	$0.460 summarise	Summarise −21% Chat −2% Agentic −28%
20	GLM 5 Z.ai	1446.3 +18.4	$1.15 chat	Chat −2% Agentic −21%
21	DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423 DeepSeek	1445.2 +17.3	$0.502 summarise	Summarise −14% Agentic −7%
22	Kimi K2.5 Moonshot AI	1445.2 +17.3	$0.578 summarise	Summarise −1% Agentic −12%

Alternatives with recorded capability losses 3

These improve score or price without worsening the other under the listed workloads, but reduce at least one recorded capability. Read the last column before switching.

Model	Intelligence	$/M	Holds under	Recorded capability loss
Gemma 4 31B Google	1443.4 +15.5	$0.205	Balanced −78% Summarise −74% Chat −79% Code gen −80% Agentic −76%	33K → 16K max output
GLM 4.6 Z.ai	1439.9 +12	$0.760	Balanced −17% Summarise −32% Chat −27% Code gen −21% Agentic −44%	33K → 16K max output
GLM 4.5 Z.ai	1430.3 tie	$0.540 summarise	Summarise −7% Chat −7% Agentic −27%	164K → 131K context

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 ±10.47 points, so a gap smaller than that is marked tie rather than an improvement — see significance bands.
204 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.
Models with no higher-scoring or cheaper alternative that is no worse on the other axis are on the value frontier. Models with such an alternative are listed here.

Choose models

Compare costs

Build with AI

Understand the numbers

Check our work

Reuse the data