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.
13 undominated of 136 · Sep 23, 2026
As of Sep 23, 2026, o1 is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. Claude Fable 5.1 scores 141.9 higher and costs 24% less, with a covering envelope. 13 of 136 rated, priced standard models are undominated.
Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements
Claude Fable 5.1 is both better and cheaper than o1: 141.9 points higher on LMArena and 24% less per million tokens, $6.25 cheaper at this mix.
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1365.7
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$26.25/M
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1507.6
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$20.00/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 136 rated, priced models on this lens: 27 models dominate it and give up nothing, 5 more dominate it but give something up. o1 scores 1365.7 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 Fable 5.1 | 1507.6 +141.9 | $20.00/M | 24% |
| Claude Opus 5 | 1504.9 +139.2 | $10.00/M | 62% |
| Claude Opus 4.6 | 1503.0 +137.3 | $10.00/M | 62% |
| Claude Fable 5 | 1492.6 +126.9 | $20.00/M | 24% |
| Claude Opus 4.7 | 1490.0 +124.3 | $10.00/M | 62% |
| Muse Spark 1.3 | 1489.7 +124.0 | $2.00/M | 92% |
| Muse Spark 1.1 | 1480.2 +114.5 | $2.00/M | 92% |
| GPT-5.5 | 1465.6 +99.9 | $11.25/M | 57% |
| Claude Opus 4.8 | 1460.8 +95.1 | $10.00/M | 62% |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | 1458.3 +92.6 | $6.00/M | 77% |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | 1455.1 +89.4 | $4.00/M | 85% |
| GPT-5.4 | 1452.6 +86.9 | $5.63/M | 79% |
| Grok 4.5 | 1450.1 +84.4 | $3.00/M | 89% |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | 1446.2 +80.5 | $4.50/M | 83% |
| GPT-6 Astra | 1443.7 +78.0 | $20.00/M | 24% |
| Claude Sonnet 5 | 1442.2 +76.5 | $4.00/M | 85% |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | 1429.9 +64.2 | $0.450/M | 98% |
| Grok 4.6 | 1429.9 +64.2 | $3.00/M | 89% |
| GPT-5.1 | 1422.6 +56.9 | $3.44/M | 87% |
| Mistral Medium 3.5 | 1420.6 +54.9 | $3.00/M | 89% |
| GPT-5.2 | 1412.4 +46.7 | $4.81/M | 82% |
| GPT-5.4 Mini | 1412.1 +46.4 | $1.69/M | 94% |
| o3 | 1409.9 +44.2 | $3.50/M | 87% |
| GPT-5 | 1406.1 +40.4 | $3.44/M | 87% |
| Grok 4.3 | 1397.7 +32.0 | $1.56/M | 94% |
| GPT-5 Mini | 1373.0 +7.3 | $0.688/M | 97% |
| GPT-5.4 Nano | 1372.9 +7.2 | $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 | 1494.7 | $1.50/M | max output |
| Gemini 3.7 Flash | 1490.5 | $1.50/M | max output |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | 1480.1 | $4.50/M | max output |
| Gemini 3.6 Flash | 1476.1 | $1.50/M | max output |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 1475.7 | $3.38/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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