Model index · Text · updated 2026-08-16

Text models, priced and ranked

Every Text model we know of — 404 from 70 companies, 289 of them with a published price per 1M tokens blended.

Every price on this page is per 1M tokens blended. 13 priced Text models are sold in a different unit and are left out of the rankings rather than converted with a guess — they are still in the full list at the bottom, and on their own pages.

Most widely-used Text models and their cheapest credible alternative

One model per company, ordered by how prominent the company is and how many independent providers serve the model — hosts only carry what customers ask for, so that is measured demand. It is not traffic or usage data, which we do not have. A matched alternative scored within 10 points on our own probe suite; unverified means it is cheaper but we have not measured one or both sides, so no quality claim is made. Both prices are standard on-demand rates, so the saving is a different model and not the same model on a queue.

6 of these alternatives are quality-matched against our own measurements; the rest are price-only until we measure them. Each alternative does the same job as the model beside it; that is a hard filter, not a ranking hint.

Cheapest Text models right now

Per 1M tokens blended, cheapest host per model. All on the standard on-demand tier — batch and flex rates run about 50% lower in exchange for a queue, and mixing them in would rank a model that answers in hours above one that answers now.

* OpenRouter chooses a host for each request, and the figure above is what its default choice costs — not a fixed rate for this model. Selecting a specific host through the same account costs whatever that host charges, which is why this row can sit above or below the hosts listed beside it. Token rates are passed through from the underlying provider with no markup, so the per-1M price above is what that host charges directly — OpenRouter's own charge sits on funding instead: 5.5% (min $0.80) by Stripe or 5% by Coinbase to buy credits, 5% of the equivalent spend if you bring your own provider key. So budget about 5% above the rate shown unless you already hold credit. Fee schedule.

Same Text model, different host

Cheapest vs dearest host for byte-identical weights, on-demand only, one row per provider. No quality trade-off by definition — though quantisation can still differ.

Best value: measured quality per dollar

Our own probe suite at temperature 0, scored by deterministic checks — no LLM judge and no vendor claim. Quality is measured on request, so most of the catalog has no score; a blank is not measured, never a low score.

Newest Text models

By first-published date. In this market recency is the strongest single signal of relevance, and it is a fact we hold for every model rather than a proxy.

All 404 Text models

Everything we hold in this category, newest first, priced or not. A model with no price is a fact about what its provider publishes, not a gap we hide.

Other categories

Image · Video · Music & Sound · 3D · All models

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