Is Hy3 a good deal?

Whether anything in this catalogue beats Hy3 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, Hy3 is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash scores 21.8 higher and costs 21% less, with a covering envelope. 12 of 145 rated, priced standard models are undominated.

Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements

Current model

Hy3

Balanced

3 tokens in per 1 out

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is both better and cheaper than Hy3: 21.8 points higher on LMArena and 21% less per million tokens, $0.049 cheaper at this mix.

Hy3

LMArena Elo · higher is better

Scale starts at 1040 Elo

1440.7

Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better

$0.231/M

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash

LMArena Elo · higher is better

Scale starts at 1040 Elo

1462.5

Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better

$0.182/M

Hy3 takes text, returns up to 128,000 tokens from a 262,144-token context, and is listed by 6 sellers.

Compared against 145 rated, priced models on this lens: 2 models dominate it and give up nothing, 1 more dominates it but gives something up. Hy3 scores 1440.7 at $0.231 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.

ModelLMArenaEffective $/MYou save
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash1462.5 +21.8$0.182/M21%
MiMo-V2.6-Flash1456.4 +15.7$0.175/M24%

Higher score, lower price, named losses

Not a drop-in. The loss is why these are not a recommendation.

ModelLMArenaEffective $/MYou give up
Gemma 4 31B1443.4$0.205/Mmax output
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash1462.5 · $0.182/MHy31440.7 · $0.231/MLMArena EloEffective $/M · Balanced
145 rated, priced standard models. Chartreuse is the frontier. Cobalt is the model you named, when it is not on the staircase.

Open the frontier

The link keeps the model and mix, using the current catalogue. Monthly spend and switching cost stay in this browser tab and are left out of the link.

Saved decision references

Save the model, workload, catalogue date and capability-preservation rule in this browser. Spend, switching cost and bill contents are not saved. No account or notifications.

Constraint: replacements must preserve the model’s capabilities; any losses remain named trade-offs.

Historical decisions cannot be fully replayed from saved references: past prices, scores and capability evidence are not stored.

Evidence & Ask