The LLM Price Index
Every major large language model, normalized to dollars per million tokens. Scored on value, cheapness, and frontier capability. Independent, automated, refreshed daily.
What this is
The LLM Price Index is a live, independently maintained price comparison for every large language model offered through the OpenRouter catalog. Input and output pricing is normalized to dollars per million tokens, blended 3:1 to produce a single comparable figure, and scored 0–10 on three axes: value, cheapness, and frontier capability. The cheapest paid model right now is Gemma 3n 4B at $0.025 per million tokens (3:1 blended).
Gemma 3n 2B (free)
7.3/10Gemma 3n E2B IT is a multimodal, instruction-tuned model developed by Google DeepMind, designed to operate efficiently at an effective parameter size…
Gemma 3n 4B (free)
7.3/10Gemma 3n E4B-it is optimized for efficient execution on mobile and low-resource devices, such as phones, laptops, and tablets. It supports multimodal…
Gemma 3n 4B
7.2/10Gemma 3n E4B-it is optimized for efficient execution on mobile and low-resource devices, such as phones, laptops, and tablets. It supports multimodal…
Gemma 2 9B
4.1/10Gemma 2 9B by Google is an advanced, open-source language model that sets a new standard for efficiency and performance in its…
Gemma 2 27B
2.9/10Gemma 2 27B by Google is an open model built from the same research and technology used to create the [Gemini models](/models?q=gemini).…
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Price drops, new models, deprecations
Every Tuesday: which models got cheaper, which launched, which got pulled. Five minutes. No filler.
Three axes, one overall score
- Value (35%) — capability per dollar. Context length, vision, tools, and structured-output support divided by log-scaled blended price.
- Cheapness (35%) — raw affordability. Free models score 10. Paid models use an inverse log curve anchored at $0.01 / Mtok.
- Frontier (30%) — how close to the state of the art. Recent releases, long context windows, and premium pricing all contribute.
Blended price formula
- Most production workloads are input-heavy, so the index uses a 3:1 blended price:
(input × 0.75) + (output × 0.25). - All prices are normalized to dollars per million tokens. OpenRouter publishes per-token figures which we multiply by 1,000,000 before display.
Where does the pricing data come from?
Every model and price on this page is sourced from OpenRouter's public models API, which aggregates pricing directly from model providers including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Mistral, Meta, xAI, DeepSeek, and dozens of others. The pipeline re-fetches and re-scores the entire catalog once per day.
Why normalize to $/million tokens?
Model providers publish prices in inconsistent units — per 1K tokens, per million tokens, per character, sometimes per request. Comparing them directly is error-prone. Dollars per million tokens is the industry's most common reporting unit and makes cross-provider comparisons immediate and honest.
What does "3:1 blended" mean?
Most production LLM workloads are input-heavy — context, RAG retrievals, system prompts — while output is comparatively short. A 3:1 input:output ratio is the informal industry convention for producing a single number that reflects typical cost: (input × 0.75) + (output × 0.25). Your actual ratio may differ; always check both input and output columns for workloads with long generations.
What's the cheapest LLM right now?
The cheapest paid model as of the latest scan is Gemma 3n 4B from Google at $0.025 per million tokens (3:1 blended). Sort by "Cheapest" above for the full ranking. Many providers also offer free-tier variants of their models, which score a perfect 10 on the cheapness axis.
Is this affiliated with OpenRouter or any provider?
No. MegaOne AI is independent. OpenRouter is used as a public data source because their models API is the most complete and up-to-date LLM catalog available, but this directory is not operated by OpenRouter and we rate all models — including ones that compete with one another.
How often does the price index update?
A full re-fetch, re-score, and daily snapshot runs once per 24 hours. Snapshots are written to a history table so we can build price-over-time charts and detect drops. New models typically appear within 24 hours of being added to OpenRouter.
Is it free to use?
Yes. Browsing, filtering, sorting, and searching the entire price index is free. The weekly email briefing is free. There is no account required and no paywall.