Which model should I use?
Don’t pay flagship prices for work a cheaper model handles just as well. Tell us the task, how good it has to be, and your volume — we’ll return the cheapest model that’s still smart enough, and show what the top model would cost so you can see the trade.
Cheapest model that clears your bar
GLM-5.3-Flash
Z.ai (Zhipu AI) · Arena 1472 · about $24/month at your volume.
The top-ranked model, Claude Opus 5, scores 33 Elo higher but costs $2,000/month — you save $1,976/month by shipping GLM-5.3-Flash instead.
| GLM-5.3-Flash | 1472 | $24 | Z.ai (Zhipu AI) |
| Qwen3.8 27B | 1439 | $30 | Alibaba |
| MiMo-V2.5 | 1427 | $35 | Xiaomi |
| MiMo-V2-Omni | 1422 | $35 | Xiaomi |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 1424 | $53 | DeepSeek |
| DeepSeek V3.2 | 1420 | $63 | DeepSeek |
| DeepSeek V3.1 | 1417 | $64 | DeepSeek |
| Hunyuan Hy3 | 1441 | $70 | Tencent |
| DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus | 1417 | $73 | DeepSeek |
| Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct | 1421 | $74 | Alibaba |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | 1430 | $90 | OpenAI |
| GPT-5.6 Luna (India) (Bedrock) | 1430 | $99 | AWS Bedrock |
Bar = within 6% of the top Arena score in this category (1505). Costs assume your token mix and are estimates for planning only.
Intelligence scores are community Arena ratings from LMArena / arena.ai, used under CC BY 4.0. Snapshot last refreshed 18 September 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.
FAQ
How do you pick the model?
We take every model that clears your quality bar for the task (an Arena score within a chosen percentage of the best), keeps the capabilities you require, and meets your context need — then return the cheapest one at your monthly volume.
Why cheapest instead of best?
The best model is almost always overkill and over-priced for routine work. Once a model is smart enough for your task, extra Arena points you can't perceive aren't worth paying for. We show the top model's cost too, so you can decide.
Cite / link to this page
You’re welcome to reference this page and its figures with attribution and a link back.
https://aicalculatorpro.com/which-model/<a href="https://aicalculatorpro.com/which-model/">Which LLM should I use? — AI Calculator Pro</a>