Is GPT-4o (2024-08-06) a good deal?
Whether anything in this catalogue beats GPT-4o (2024-08-06) on both quality and price, and what you give up if it does. A computation on the current catalogue, not an opinion.
12 undominated of 145 · Oct 6, 2026
As of Oct 6, 2026, GPT-4o (2024-08-06) is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. Gemini 3.8 Flash scores 214.5 higher and costs 31% less, with a covering envelope. 12 of 145 rated, priced standard models are undominated.
Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements
Gemini 3.8 Flash is both better and cheaper than GPT-4o (2024-08-06): 214.5 points higher on LMArena and 31% less per million tokens, $1.38 cheaper at this mix.
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1282.5
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$4.38/M
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1497.0
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$3.00/M
GPT-4o (2024-08-06) takes text, image, file, returns up to 16,384 tokens from a 128,000-token context, and is listed by 2 sellers.
Compared against 145 rated, priced models on this lens: 36 models dominate it and give up nothing, 5 more dominate it but give something up. GPT-4o (2024-08-06) scores 1282.5 at $4.38 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 3.8 Flash | 1497.0 +214.5 | $3.00/M | 31% |
| Muse Spark 1.3 | 1489.9 +207.4 | $2.00/M | 54% |
| Gemini 3.7 Flash | 1487.0 +204.5 | $3.00/M | 31% |
| Muse Spark 1.2 | 1483.2 +200.7 | $2.00/M | 54% |
| Gemini 3.6 Flash | 1479.5 +197.0 | $1.50/M | 66% |
| Muse Spark 1.1 | 1479.2 +196.7 | $2.00/M | 54% |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 1477.7 +195.2 | $3.38/M | 23% |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | 1466.6 +184.1 | $4.00/M | 9% |
| Gemini 2.5 Pro | 1457.8 +175.3 | $3.44/M | 21% |
| Grok 4.5 | 1448.1 +165.6 | $3.00/M | 31% |
| GPT-6.1 Sol | 1445.6 +163.1 | $4.00/M | 9% |
| Claude Sonnet 5 | 1442.9 +160.4 | $4.00/M | 9% |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | 1434.7 +152.2 | $0.850/M | 81% |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | 1431.0 +148.5 | $0.450/M | 90% |
| Grok 4.6 | 1427.4 +144.9 | $3.00/M | 31% |
| GPT-5.1 | 1422.2 +139.7 | $3.44/M | 21% |
| Mistral Medium 3.5 | 1421.2 +138.7 | $3.00/M | 31% |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | 1417.0 +134.5 | $0.850/M | 81% |
| Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview | 1415.7 +133.2 | $0.563/M | 87% |
| GPT-5.4 Mini | 1411.4 +128.9 | $1.69/M | 61% |
| o3 | 1409.9 +127.4 | $3.50/M | 20% |
| GPT-5 | 1406.1 +123.6 | $3.44/M | 21% |
| Grok 4.7 | 1399.9 +117.4 | $3.00/M | 31% |
| Grok 4.3 | 1396.7 +114.2 | $1.56/M | 64% |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 1396.1 +113.6 | $2.00/M | 54% |
| GPT-6 Sol | 1395.4 +112.9 | $4.00/M | 9% |
| GPT-6 Luna | 1391.5 +109.0 | $0.200/M | 95% |
| GPT-4.1 | 1383.0 +100.5 | $3.50/M | 20% |
| GPT-5 Mini | 1373.2 +90.7 | $0.688/M | 84% |
| GPT-5.4 Nano | 1372.1 +89.6 | $0.463/M | 89% |
| Nova 2 Lite | 1361.8 +79.3 | $0.850/M | 81% |
| o4 Mini | 1353.2 +70.7 | $1.93/M | 56% |
| GPT-4.1 Mini | 1340.4 +57.9 | $0.700/M | 84% |
| GPT-5 Nano | 1320.0 +37.5 | $0.138/M | 97% |
| GPT-4o-mini (2024-07-18) | 1286.4 +3.9 | $0.263/M | 94% |
| GPT-4.1 Nano | 1284.8 +2.3 | $0.175/M | 96% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| MiMo-V2.6-Pro | 1491.0 | $0.540/M | file |
| Kimi K3 | 1475.9 | $3.76/M | file |
| GLM 5.3 | 1471.4 | $1.00/M | image, file |
| GLM 5.2 | 1470.4 | $1.12/M | image, file |
| GLM 5.3 Flash | 1469.6 | $0.238/M | file |
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