Is o1 a good deal?
Whether anything in this catalogue beats o1 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, o1 is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. Claude Opus 5.5 scores 145.9 higher and costs 70% less, with a covering envelope. 12 of 145 rated, priced standard models are undominated.
Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements
Claude Opus 5.5 is both better and cheaper than o1: 145.9 points higher on LMArena and 70% less per million tokens, $18.25 cheaper at this mix.
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1365.8
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$26.25/M
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1511.7
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$8.00/M
o1 takes text, image, file, returns up to 100,000 tokens from a 200,000-token context, and is listed by 1 seller.
Compared against 145 rated, priced models on this lens: 34 models dominate it and give up nothing, 5 more dominate it but give something up. o1 scores 1365.8 at $26.25 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 5.5 | 1511.7 +145.9 | $8.00/M | 70% |
| Claude Fable 5.1 | 1510.6 +144.8 | $20.00/M | 24% |
| Claude Opus 4.6 | 1503.2 +137.4 | $10.00/M | 62% |
| Claude Opus 5 | 1502.1 +136.3 | $10.00/M | 62% |
| Claude Fable 5 | 1491.7 +125.9 | $20.00/M | 24% |
| Muse Spark 1.3 | 1489.9 +124.1 | $2.00/M | 92% |
| Claude Opus 4.7 | 1489.9 +124.1 | $10.00/M | 62% |
| Muse Spark 1.2 | 1483.2 +117.4 | $2.00/M | 92% |
| Muse Spark 1.1 | 1479.2 +113.4 | $2.00/M | 92% |
| GPT-5.5 | 1466.8 +101.0 | $11.25/M | 57% |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | 1466.6 +100.8 | $4.00/M | 85% |
| Claude Opus 4.8 | 1461.0 +95.2 | $10.00/M | 62% |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | 1457.8 +92.0 | $6.00/M | 77% |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | 1456.3 +90.5 | $8.00/M | 70% |
| GPT-5.4 | 1452.2 +86.4 | $5.63/M | 79% |
| Grok 4.5 | 1448.1 +82.3 | $3.00/M | 89% |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | 1446.3 +80.5 | $4.50/M | 83% |
| GPT-6.1 Sol | 1445.6 +79.8 | $4.00/M | 85% |
| Claude Sonnet 5 | 1442.9 +77.1 | $4.00/M | 85% |
| GPT-6 Astra | 1442.3 +76.5 | $20.00/M | 24% |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | 1431.0 +65.2 | $0.450/M | 98% |
| Grok 4.6 | 1427.4 +61.6 | $3.00/M | 89% |
| GPT-5.1 | 1422.2 +56.4 | $3.44/M | 87% |
| Mistral Medium 3.5 | 1421.2 +55.4 | $3.00/M | 89% |
| GPT-5.2 | 1412.3 +46.5 | $4.81/M | 82% |
| GPT-5.4 Mini | 1411.4 +45.6 | $1.69/M | 94% |
| o3 | 1409.9 +44.1 | $3.50/M | 87% |
| GPT-5 | 1406.1 +40.3 | $3.44/M | 87% |
| Grok 4.7 | 1399.9 +34.1 | $3.00/M | 89% |
| Grok 4.3 | 1396.7 +30.9 | $1.56/M | 94% |
| GPT-6 Sol | 1395.4 +29.6 | $4.00/M | 85% |
| GPT-6 Luna | 1391.5 +25.7 | $0.200/M | 99% |
| GPT-5 Mini | 1373.2 +7.4 | $0.688/M | 97% |
| GPT-5.4 Nano | 1372.1 +6.3 | $0.463/M | 98% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 3.8 Flash | 1497.0 | $3.00/M | max output |
| MiMo-V2.6-Pro | 1491.0 | $0.540/M | file |
| Gemini 3.7 Flash | 1487.0 | $3.00/M | max output |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | 1480.2 | $4.50/M | max output |
| Gemini 3.6 Flash | 1479.5 | $1.50/M | max output |
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Constraint: replacements must preserve the model’s capabilities; any losses remain named trade-offs.
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