---
title: "Cheaper alternatives to GPT-5 Nano · Undominated.ai"
canonical: https://undominated.ai/alternatives/openai__gpt-5-nano/
description: "12 models score at least as high as GPT-5 Nano and cost no more on a balanced workload. 0 give up nothing measurable; the other 12 name what they drop. Measured prices and independent scores."
---

# Cheaper alternatives to GPT-5 Nano · Undominated.ai

> 12 models score at least as high as GPT-5 Nano and cost no more on a balanced workload. 0 give up nothing measurable; the other 12 name what they drop. Measured prices and independent scores.

# Cheaper alternatives to GPT-5 Nano

OpenAI · LMArena 1320.3 · $0.138/M on a balanced workload · prices as of 2026-08-28

## Everything cheaper and higher-scoring gives something up.

Of the 133 models carrying both an independent score and a published price at the same delivery mode, **12** score at least as high as GPT-5 Nano and cost no more under at least one workload. **12** 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 GPT-5 Nano, it is not generated.

## Where it holds

| Workload | GPT-5 Nano $/M | Better and cheaper | With a trade |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Balanced | $0.138 | 0 | 8 |
| Summarise | $0.055 | 0 | 2 |
| Chat | $0.176 | 0 | 9 |
| Code gen | $0.256 | 0 | 12 |
| Agentic | $0.076 | 0 | 5 |

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 | 1320.3 |
| --- | --- |
| Context window | 400K |
| Max output | 128K |
| Input modes | text, image, file |
| Tool use | yes |
| Extended reasoning | yes |

A replacement has to clear every line above, not just the score. [Full record for GPT-5 Nano](/models/openai__gpt-5-nano/).

## Cheaper and higher-scoring, but you give something up 12

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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Gemma 4 26B A4B Google | 1434.6 +114.3 | $0.138 | Balanced same price Code gen −10% | 400K → 262K context 128K → 16K max output no file input |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 DeepSeek | 1431.6 +111.3 | $0.101 | Balanced −26% Chat −47% Code gen −51% Agentic −28% | no image, file input |
| Qwen3.5-Flash Qwen | 1397.6 +77.3 | $0.114 | Balanced −17% Chat −19% Code gen −29% | 128K → 66K max output no file input |
| Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 Qwen | 1384.3 +64 | $0.084 | Balanced −39% Chat −40% Code gen −47% Agentic −8% | 400K → 262K context 128K → 32K max output no image, file input no extended reasoning |
| Solar Pro 4 Upstage | 1376.2 +55.9 | $0.052 | Balanced −62% Summarise −49% Chat −67% Code gen −68% Agentic −61% | no image, file input |
| gpt-oss-120b OpenAI | 1365.6 +45.3 | $0.070 | Balanced −49% Summarise −20% Chat −49% Code gen −54% Agentic −25% | 400K → 131K context 128K → 118K max output no image, file input |
| Qwen3 32B Qwen | 1340.1 +19.8 | $0.130 | Balanced −5% Chat −9% Code gen −22% | 400K → 131K context 128K → 16K max output no image, file input |
| Gemma 3 12B Google | 1334.2 +13.9 | $0.075 | Balanced −45% Chat −49% Code gen −57% Agentic −14% | 400K → 131K context 128K → 16K max output no file input no extended reasoning |
| Gemma 4 31B Google | 1441.7 +121.4 | $0.237 code gen | Code gen −8% | 400K → 262K context 128K → 16K max output no file input |
| Hy3 Tencent | 1441.2 +120.9 | $0.163 chat | Chat −8% Code gen −12% | 400K → 262K context no image, file input |
| MiMo-V2.5 Xiaomi | 1427.3 +107 | $0.155 chat | Chat −12% Code gen −17% | no file input |
| Step 3.5 Flash StepFun | 1403.8 +83.5 | $0.220 code gen | Code gen −14% | 400K → 262K context 128K → 66K max output no image, file input |

## 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/).