Cheaper alternatives to R1

DeepSeek LMArena 1372.7 $1.15/M on a balanced workload prices as of 2026-08-28

47 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, 52 score at least as high as R1 and cost no more under at least one workload. 47 match or beat it on every capability we hold — context, maximum output, input modes, tool use and extended reasoning. 5 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 R1, it is not generated.

Where it holds

Workload	R1 $/M	Better and cheaper	With a trade
Balanced	$1.15	40	5
Summarise	$0.790	44	5
Chat	$1.42	40	5
Code gen	$1.78	40	5
Agentic	$0.970	47	5

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	1372.7
Context window	64K
Max output	16K
Input modes	text
Tool use	yes
Extended reasoning	yes

A replacement has to clear every line above, not just the score. Full record for R1.

Better and cheaper, nothing given up 47

Each of these matches or beats R1 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	Gemini 3.7 Flash Google	1490.2 +117.5	$0.750	Balanced −35% Summarise −55% Chat −38% Code gen −30% Agentic −59%
2	MiMo-V2.5-Pro Xiaomi	1465 +92.3	$0.544	Balanced −53% Summarise −58% Chat −66% Code gen −63% Agentic −75%
3	Qwen3.7 Plus Qwen	1456.2 +83.5	$0.560	Balanced −51% Summarise −63% Chat −56% Code gen −51% Agentic −68%
4	Gemma 4 31B Google	1441.7 +69	$0.152	Balanced −87% Summarise −88% Chat −87% Code gen −87% Agentic −89%
5	Hy3 Tencent	1441.2 +68.5	$0.144	Balanced −87% Summarise −90% Chat −89% Code gen −87% Agentic −91%
6	Kimi K2.5 Moonshot AI	1445.2 +72.5	$0.900	Balanced −22% Summarise −45% Chat −26% Code gen −16% Agentic −49%
7	GLM 5 Z.ai	1445.2 +72.5	$0.930	Balanced −19% Summarise −33% Chat −31% Code gen −24% Agentic −47%
8	Gemma 4 26B A4B Google	1434.6 +61.9	$0.138	Balanced −88% Summarise −89% Chat −87% Code gen −87% Agentic −89%
9	Qwen3.8 27B Qwen	1440.8 +68.1	$0.956	Balanced −17% Summarise −45% Chat −17% Code gen −6% Agentic −44%
10	GLM 4.6 Z.ai	1439.8 +67.1	$0.875	Balanced −24% Summarise −42% Chat −31% Code gen −23% Agentic −50%
11	DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 DeepSeek	1431.6 +58.9	$0.101	Balanced −91% Summarise −92% Chat −93% Code gen −93% Agentic −94%
12	Qwen3.5 397B A17B Qwen	1438.3 +65.6	$0.877	Balanced −24% Summarise −38% Chat −18% Code gen −12% Agentic −30%
13	Qwen3.6 Plus Qwen	1436.8 +64.1	$0.731	Balanced −36% Summarise −49% Chat −31% Code gen −27% Agentic −41%
14	MiniMax M3 MiniMax	1434.8 +62.1	$0.525	Balanced −54% Summarise −65% Chat −59% Code gen −54% Agentic −70%
15	DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423 DeepSeek	1439.2 +66.5	$1.09	Balanced −5% Summarise −13% Chat −31% Code gen −25% Agentic −46%
16	Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite Google	1436.5 +63.8	$0.850	Balanced −26% Summarise −58% Chat −23% Code gen −10% Agentic −52%
17	GLM 4.7 Z.ai	1435.3 +62.6	$0.738	Balanced −36% Summarise −52% Chat −41% Code gen −33% Agentic −58%
18	MiMo-V2.5 Xiaomi	1427.3 +54.6	$0.175	Balanced −85% Summarise −86% Chat −89% Code gen −88% Agentic −92%
19	GPT-5.6 Luna OpenAI	1428.5 +55.8	$0.450	Balanced −61% Summarise −75% Chat −62% Code gen −56% Agentic −75%
20	DeepSeek V3.2 DeepSeek	1424.6 +51.9	$0.290	Balanced −75% Summarise −71% Chat −81% Code gen −82% Agentic −79%
21	DeepSeek V3.2 Exp DeepSeek	1424.4 +51.7	$0.305	Balanced −73% Summarise −65% Chat −77% Code gen −80% Agentic −70%
22	GLM 4.5 Z.ai	1429.4 +56.7	$1.00	Balanced −13% Summarise −32% Chat −23% Code gen −15% Agentic −43%
23	R1 0528 DeepSeek	1427.9 +55.2	$0.912	Balanced −21% Summarise −32% Chat −21% Code gen −17% Agentic −32%
24	DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus DeepSeek	1419.6 +46.9	$0.453	Balanced −61% Summarise −66% Chat −63% Code gen −61% Agentic −69%
25	DeepSeek V3.1 DeepSeek	1419.1 +46.4	$0.825	Balanced −28% Summarise −23% Chat −30% Code gen −32% Agentic −26%
26	Qwen3.5-122B-A10B Qwen	1417.9 +45.2	$0.715	Balanced −38% Summarise −56% Chat −30% Code gen −24% Agentic −45%
27	Gemini 2.5 Flash Google	1417.3 +44.6	$0.850	Balanced −26% Summarise −58% Chat −23% Code gen −10% Agentic −52%
28	Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview Google	1414.8 +42.1	$0.563	Balanced −51% Summarise −69% Chat −52% Code gen −45% Agentic −69%
29	Qwen3 235B A22B Thinking 2507 Qwen	1413.8 +41.1	$0.748	Balanced −35% Summarise −58% Chat −25% Code gen −17% Agentic −44%
30	Inkling Small Thinking Machines	1411.7 +39	$0.637	Balanced −45% Summarise −51% Chat −55% Code gen −51% Agentic −63%
31	Qwen3.5-27B Qwen	1407.9 +35.2	$0.536	Balanced −53% Summarise −67% Chat −48% Code gen −43% Agentic −59%
32	Step 3.5 Flash StepFun	1403.8 +31.1	$0.150	Balanced −87% Summarise −86% Chat −87% Code gen −88% Agentic −87%
33	MiniMax M2.7 MiniMax	1405.3 +32.6	$0.525	Balanced −54% Summarise −65% Chat −59% Code gen −54% Agentic −70%
34	Qwen3.5-Flash Qwen	1397.6 +24.9	$0.114	Balanced −90% Summarise −91% Chat −90% Code gen −90% Agentic −90%
35	Qwen3.5-35B-A3B Qwen	1395.6 +22.9	$0.500	Balanced −57% Summarise −62% Chat −54% Code gen −52% Agentic −59%
36	GLM 4.5 Air Z.ai	1382.8 tie	$0.310	Balanced −73% Summarise −83% Chat −73% Code gen −69% Agentic −82%
37	Solar Pro 4 Upstage	1376.2 tie	$0.052	Balanced −95% Summarise −96% Chat −96% Code gen −95% Agentic −97%
38	GLM 4.6V Z.ai	1374.7 tie	$0.450	Balanced −61% Summarise −67% Chat −67% Code gen −64% Agentic −75%
39	GPT-5.4 Nano OpenAI	1372.8 tie	$0.463	Balanced −60% Summarise −75% Chat −60% Code gen −54% Agentic −74%
40	GPT-5 Mini OpenAI	1373.4 tie	$0.688	Balanced −40% Summarise −65% Chat −38% Code gen −28% Agentic −61%
41	Gemini 3.6 Flash Google	1476.5 +103.8	$0.708 summarise	Summarise −10% Agentic −18%
42	Kimi K2.6 Moonshot AI	1455 +82.3	$0.938 agentic	Agentic −3%
43	Inkling Thinking Machines	1439.2 +66.5	$0.945 agentic	Agentic −3%
44	Qwen3 Max Qwen	1412.7 +40	$0.758 summarise	Summarise −4% Agentic −10%
45	GPT-5.4 Mini OpenAI	1412.1 +39.4	$0.745 summarise	Summarise −6% Agentic −6%
46	Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking Qwen	1400.6 +27.9	$0.580 summarise	Summarise −27% Agentic −3%
47	Grok 4.3 xAI	1397.5 +24.8	$0.813 agentic	Agentic −16%

Cheaper and higher-scoring, but you give something up 5

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
Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507 Qwen	1419.3 +46.6	$0.205	Balanced −82% Summarise −86% Chat −81% Code gen −79% Agentic −84%	no extended reasoning
Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct Qwen	1418.6 +45.9	$0.350	Balanced −70% Summarise −82% Chat −65% Code gen −61% Agentic −76%	no extended reasoning
Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct Qwen	1420.9 +48.2	$0.632	Balanced −45% Summarise −67% Chat −40% Code gen −32% Agentic −59%	no extended reasoning
Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 Qwen	1384.3 +11.6	$0.084	Balanced −93% Summarise −93% Chat −93% Code gen −92% Agentic −93%	no extended reasoning
DeepSeek V3 0324 DeepSeek	1375 tie	$0.438	Balanced −62% Summarise −64% Chat −61% Code gen −61% Agentic −63%	no extended reasoning

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.