Best LLM for Aider
Aider has no subscription — you bring your own API key, so the model you choose IS your bill. That makes cost-per-token and coding ability the whole decision, with no request pool to hide behind.
Models Aider supports
Aider is an open-source terminal tool that works with any model via your own API key — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek and open-weight models through a host. There's no seat: you pay the model's per-token price directly.
Best value pick
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
DeepSeek · Coding Arena 1619 · about $10.50/month at 100,000 calls. The top-ranked Claude Opus 5.5 costs $1,600.00/month — you save $1,589.50/month with DeepSeek V4.1 Flash.
| 1 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | 1619 | $10.50 | DeepSeek |
| 2 | Qwen3.8 Flash Next | 1628 | $25.00 | Alibaba |
| 3 | MiMo-V2.6-Flash | 1637 | $35.00 | Xiaomi |
| 4 | GLM-5.3-Flash | 1607 | $38.84 | Z.ai (Zhipu AI) |
| 5 | MiMo-V2.6-Pro | 1625 | $108.75 | Xiaomi |
| 6 | GLM-5.3 | 1623 | $388.43 | Z.ai (Zhipu AI) |
| 7 | GPT-6.1 Terra | 1673 | $400.00 | OpenAI |
| 8 | Muse Spark 1.3 | 1620 | $400.00 | Meta |
| 9 | GLM-5.2 | 1606 | $430.00 | Z.ai (Zhipu AI) |
| 10 | GPT-6.1 Terra (Bedrock)Est. | 1673 | $440.00 | AWS Bedrock |
| 11 | Grok 4.6 | 1616 | $600.00 | xAI |
| 12 | Grok 4.7 | 1637 | $600.00 | xAI |
Intelligence scores are community Arena ratings from LMArena / arena.ai, used under CC BY 4.0. Snapshot last refreshed 2 November 2026. Scores are a relative signal, not an absolute measure of capability. A Measured score was voted on directly; an Estimated score is inherited from an identical base model (a regional/creator-prefixed hosting duplicate). See our methodology.
Why picking isn’t obvious
Because you pay the provider directly, Aider rewards models with a strong coding-Arena score at a low blended price, and its diff-based editing works well even with mid-tier models. Aider also relies on the model emitting clean edit blocks, so tool/instruction-following reliability matters as much as raw score. We rank the eligible models by coding Arena and cost.
FAQ
What is the best value LLM for aider?
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is the cheapest model that still clears our quality bar for this task, at about $10.50/month for 100,000 calls (1,500 in / 500 out). It scores 1619 on the Coding Arena.
Is the most expensive model worth it for this?
Claude Opus 5.5 tops the Coding Arena but costs about $1,600.00/month here — roughly $1,589.50/month more than DeepSeek V4.1 Flash for 191 extra Arena points. For most workloads that gap is not worth the premium.
Does Aider charge a subscription?
No. Aider is open-source and uses your own provider API key, so you pay per token to whichever model you point it at. The cheapest capable coding model is usually the best default, with a flagship on standby for hard changes.
Which model works best with Aider's edit format?
Models that reliably follow instructions and emit clean diff/edit blocks — generally the higher coding-Arena models — reduce failed edits. But cost adds up fast at the terminal, so value matters; the ranking balances both.
Cite / link to this page
You’re welcome to reference this page and its figures with attribution and a link back.
https://aicalculatorpro.com/best-llm-for/aider/<a href="https://aicalculatorpro.com/best-llm-for/aider/">Best LLM for Aider — AI Calculator Pro</a>