Is R1 a good deal?
Whether anything in this catalogue beats R1 on both quality and price, and what you give up if it does. A computation on the current catalogue, not an opinion.
13 undominated of 136 · Sep 23, 2026
As of Sep 23, 2026, R1 is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. GLM 5.3 Flash scores 99.3 higher and costs 79% less, with a covering envelope. 13 of 136 rated, priced standard models are undominated.
Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements
GLM 5.3 Flash is both better and cheaper than R1: 99.3 points higher on LMArena and 79% less per million tokens, $0.91 cheaper at this mix.
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1372.6
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$1.15/M
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1471.9
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$0.237/M
R1 takes text, returns up to 16,000 tokens from a 64,000-token context, and is listed by 1 seller.
Compared against 136 rated, priced models on this lens: 39 models dominate it and give up nothing, 5 more dominate it but give something up. R1 scores 1372.6 at $1.15 per million tokens for this mix.
Envelope-safe replacements
Each row scores at least as high, costs no more, and covers this model’s context, output, modalities, tools, and reasoning. A cheaper narrower model is not listed here.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| GLM 5.3 Flash | 1471.9 +99.3 | $0.237/M | 79% |
| GLM 5.2 | 1466.9 +94.3 | $0.998/M | 13% |
| MiMo-V2.5-Pro | 1464.8 +92.2 | $0.544/M | 53% |
| Qwen3.7 Plus | 1454.2 +81.6 | $0.560/M | 51% |
| GLM 5 | 1446.3 +73.7 | $0.930/M | 19% |
| Kimi K2.5 | 1445.6 +73.0 | $0.900/M | 22% |
| Gemma 4 31B | 1441.7 +69.1 | $0.153/M | 87% |
| Hy3 | 1440.6 +68.0 | $0.144/M | 87% |
| GLM 4.6 | 1440.5 +67.9 | $0.760/M | 34% |
| Qwen3.8 27B | 1439.3 +66.7 | $1.06/M | 7% |
| Qwen3.6 Plus | 1436.7 +64.1 | $0.731/M | 36% |
| GLM 4.7 | 1435.9 +63.3 | $0.738/M | 36% |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | 1435.5 +62.9 | $0.850/M | 26% |
| Gemma 4 26B A4B | 1434.5 +61.9 | $0.143/M | 88% |
| MiniMax M3 | 1433.5 +60.9 | $0.525/M | 54% |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 | 1431.8 +59.2 | $0.103/M | 91% |
| GLM 4.5 | 1430.2 +57.6 | $1.00/M | 13% |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | 1429.9 +57.3 | $0.450/M | 61% |
| R1 0528 | 1427.5 +54.9 | $0.912/M | 21% |
| MiMo-V2.5 | 1427.4 +54.8 | $0.175/M | 85% |
| DeepSeek V3.2 | 1424.8 +52.2 | $0.302/M | 74% |
| DeepSeek V3.2 Exp | 1422.6 +50.0 | $0.305/M | 73% |
| DeepSeek V3.1 | 1419.7 +47.1 | $0.425/M | 63% |
| Qwen3.5-122B-A10B | 1417.9 +45.3 | $0.715/M | 38% |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | 1417.3 +44.7 | $0.850/M | 26% |
| DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus | 1416.9 +44.3 | $0.453/M | 61% |
| Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview | 1415.3 +42.7 | $0.563/M | 51% |
| Qwen3 235B A22B Thinking 2507 | 1415.1 +42.5 | $0.747/M | 35% |
| Inkling Small | 1412.3 +39.7 | $0.637/M | 45% |
| Qwen3.5-27B | 1408.1 +35.5 | $0.536/M | 53% |
| MiniMax M2.7 | 1404.6 +32.0 | $0.525/M | 54% |
| Step 3.5 Flash | 1403.7 +31.1 | $0.150/M | 87% |
| Qwen3.5-Flash | 1397.7 +25.1 | $0.114/M | 90% |
| Qwen3.5-35B-A3B | 1395.5 +22.9 | $0.547/M | 52% |
| GLM 4.5 Air | 1383.7 +11.1 | $0.310/M | 73% |
| Solar Pro 4 | 1377.3 +4.7 | $0.158/M | 86% |
| GLM 4.6V | 1376.5 +3.9 | $0.450/M | 61% |
| GPT-5 Mini | 1373.0 +0.4 | $0.688/M | 40% |
| GPT-5.4 Nano | 1372.9 +0.3 | $0.463/M | 60% |
Higher score, lower price, named losses
Not a drop-in. The loss is why these are not a recommendation.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You give up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct | 1420.6 | $0.632/M | reasoning |
| Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507 | 1419.8 | $0.153/M | reasoning |
| Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct | 1417.6 | $0.343/M | reasoning |
| Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 | 1383.6 | $0.084/M | reasoning |
| DeepSeek V3 0324 | 1375.0 | $0.438/M | reasoning |
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