Cheap models worth trying: prices and scores side by side

A cheap model is only cheap if it does the job. So we took every chat model in the AnyRouter catalog that has a published GPQA Diamond score and a price above $0, and divided the score by the price.

The tables below are the result on November 14, 2026. They also list the decision models you can call with only an AnyRouter key.

These are the eight best scores per dollar among models that score at least 80% on GPQA Diamond. The list is ordered by score per dollar.

Both GPT Luna rows are 80% off their list price as of November 14, 2026: GPT-6 Luna lists at $0.10 / $0.50 and GPT-5.6 Luna at $0.20 / $1.20. If the discount ends, their score per dollar drops.

Credits means AnyRouter serves the model and bills your credits. BYOK means you add your own provider key, the provider bills you, and AnyRouter adds no markup. Pool means donated keys can serve it on paid plans. Prices marked (list) are the lowest provider list price on a BYOK route. Provider prices can differ a lot: GLM-5.3 lists at $0.06 / $0.22 on an AIHubMix preview listing and at $1.40 / $4.40 on most other providers.

Models that are free with Go are left out of the ranking, because a $0 price has no score per dollar. See them on the models page.

Decision models answer typed questions about a piece of text with a calibrated probability. They generate no chat text, so they bill input tokens only. Our catalog stores no benchmark score for any decision model, so this table compares price, access and what each one is for.

anyrouter/decision routes to the decision models AnyRouter serves at $0 on its own keys. It is free on Go and up, with a 5-request trial on the Free plan. The other rows are called by name and bill credits at the price shown.

• Chat, code or tool use on a budget, with only an AnyRouter key: start with GPT-6 Luna.
• You already pay a provider such as OpenRouter: add that key and try Qwen3.7 Flash or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash at no markup.
• A yes/no, choice or score answer you feed into code: use anyrouter/decision, or a Drex model for finance or image checks.

A chat request with your AnyRouter key:

curl https://anyrouter.dev/api/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ANYROUTER_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "openai/gpt-6-luna",
    "messages": [
      { "role": "user", "content": "Explain NAT in one sentence." }
    ],
    "max_tokens": 200
  }'

A decision request:

curl -sS https://anyrouter.dev/api/v1/decisions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ANYROUTER_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "state": "Help! My payouts have been failing for 3 days.",
    "model": "anyrouter/decision",
    "questions": {
      "is_urgent": {
        "type": "noul",
        "instructions": "Does this convey urgency?"
      }
    }
  }'

Run decisions in the browser on the Decisions app. The request shapes are in the Chat Completions and Decisions API reference. Add a provider key with the BYOK guide.

Every number comes from the AnyRouter catalog on November 14, 2026. The score is GPQA Diamond, a graduate-level science question set. Each score is reported by Epoch AI or Artificial Analysis, as the table says, and the date is when we last pulled that source. Each price is the one the models page shows. For a Credits row it is the price AnyRouter bills, including any running discount. For a BYOK row it is the lowest list price among the providers that serve it, and other providers can charge more. Score per dollar is the GPQA Diamond fraction divided by a blended price per 1M tokens, weighting input 3 to 1 over output, computed from the unrounded prices. It measures one benchmark and one price mix. It does not measure speed, and your own prompts may rank the models differently. Prices and discounts change, so check the model page before you commit.