Undominated.ai

Alternatives to GPT-5 Nano

OpenAI LMArena 1320 $0.138/M on a balanced workload prices as of 2026-10-06

Every higher-scoring or cheaper alternative has a recorded capability loss.

Of the 144 models carrying both an independent score and a published price at the same delivery mode, 11 score at least as high as GPT-5 Nano and cost no more under at least one listed workload, with at least one of those dimensions improved. 11 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

WorkloadGPT-5 Nano $/MRecorded capabilities preservedRecorded capability losses
Balanced$0.13807
Summarise$0.05501
Chat$0.177010
Code gen$0.256011
Agentic$0.07603

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

Intelligence1320
Context window400K
Max output128K
Input modestext, image, file
Tool useyes
Extended reasoningyes

Preserving recorded capabilities requires matching or beating these fields. Full record for GPT-5 Nano, or check GPT-5 Nano against the whole catalogue.

Alternatives with recorded capability losses 11

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.

ModelIntelligence$/MHolds underRecorded capability loss
Gemma 4 26B A4B Google1433.9 +113.9$0.127
  • Balanced −8%
  • Chat −15%
  • Code gen −20%
  • 400K → 262K context
  • no file input
DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 DeepSeek1432.1 +112.1$0.113
  • Balanced −18%
  • Chat −41%
  • Code gen −46%
  • Agentic −20%
  • no image, file input
Qwen3.5-Flash Qwen1397 +77$0.114
  • Balanced −17%
  • Chat −19%
  • Code gen −29%
  • 128K → 66K max output
  • no file input
gpt-oss-120b OpenAI1365.4 +45.4$0.065
  • Balanced −53%
  • Summarise −32%
  • Chat −51%
  • Code gen −56%
  • Agentic −33%
  • 400K → 131K context
  • 128K → 118K max output
  • no image, file input
Gemma 3 27B Google1357.8 +37.8$0.100
  • Balanced −27%
  • Chat −37%
  • Code gen −50%
  • 400K → 131K context
  • 128K → 118K max output
  • no file input
  • no extended reasoning
Qwen3 32B Qwen1340.1 +20.1$0.130
  • Balanced −5%
  • Chat −9%
  • Code gen −22%
  • 400K → 131K context
  • 128K → 16K max output
  • no image, file input
Gemma 3 12B Google1334.2 +14.2$0.075
  • Balanced −45%
  • Chat −49%
  • Code gen −57%
  • Agentic −14%
  • 400K → 131K context
  • 128K → 16K max output
  • no file input
  • no extended reasoning
MiMo-V2.6-Flash Xiaomi1456.4 +136.4$0.155 chat
  • Chat −12%
  • Code gen −17%
  • no file input
MiMo-V2.5 Xiaomi1427.5 +107.5$0.155 chat
  • Chat −12%
  • Code gen −17%
  • no file input
Step 3.5 Flash StepFun1403 +83$0.220 code gen
  • Code gen −14%
  • 400K → 262K context
  • 128K → 66K max output
  • no image, file input
Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 Qwen1384.1 +64.1$0.174 chat
  • Chat −1%
  • Code gen −16%
  • 400K → 262K context
  • no image, file input
  • 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 ±10.47 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.
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