Best cheap LLM (October 2026)
As of 12 Oct 2026, the best cheap LLM (under $2 per million tokens) on independent benchmarks is MiMo-V2.6-Pro by Xiaomi (index 64.8 at $0.55/M), ahead of Gemini 3.8 Flash (medium) (index 64.6 at $1.50/M) and Gemini 3.7 Flash (medium) (index 63.3 at $1.50/M).
The highest-quality models with a blended list price below $2 per million tokens (three input tokens per output token), ranked on the BenchLeader Index.
197 models qualify · data as of 12 Oct 2026 · rebuilt once a day (the run starts at 22:03 UTC)
MiMo-V2.6-Pro #1 here: index 64.8 at $0.55/MBest value MiMo-V2.6-Flash most index points per dollar among the top 15 (59.7 at $0.175/M)Fastest of the top 15
Gemini 3.7 Flash medium285 output tokens per second| # | Model | Index | Price $/M | Speed tok/s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MiMo-V2.6-ProXiaomi | 64.8 | $0.548 | 43 |
| 2 | Gemini 3.8 FlashmediumGoogle | 64.6 | $1.50 | 76 |
| 3 | Gemini 3.7 FlashmediumGoogle | 63.3 | $1.50 | 285 |
| 4 |  DeepSeek V4 PromaxDeepSeek | 62.8 | $1.98 | 93 |
| 5 |  Step 5 PreviewStepFun | 62.4 | $1.43 | 87 |
| 6 |  GLM 5.3 FlashZhipu AI | 62.2 | $0.238 | 53 |
| 7 | DeepSeek V4.1 FlashmaxDeepSeek | 61.8 | $0.525 | 217 |
| 8 |  Claude Haiku 5.5highAnthropic | 61.3 | $0.200 | 174 |
| 9 | Gemini 3.6 FlashhighGoogle | 60.4 | $1.50 | 197 |
| 10 |  Qwen3.8-Flash-NextAlibaba | 59.8 | $0.230 | 56 |
| 11 | MiMo-V2.6-FlashXiaomi | 59.7 | $0.175 | 58 |
| 12 |  GPT-5.6 LunaxhighOpenAI | 59.6 | $0.450 | 111 |
| 13 | Gemini 3 FlashthinkingGoogle | 59.2 | $1.13 | 208 |
| 14 | GLM-5thinkingZhipu AI | 58.9 | $1.55 | 70 |
| 15 | GPT-6 LunaxhighOpenAI | 58.9 | $0.200 | 116 |
Full ranked list (197 models) · MiMo-V2.6-Pro vs Gemini 3.8 Flash · Best for high-volume extraction, with the weighting stated · Methodology
Best cheap LLM: questions
- What is the best cheap LLM (under $2 per million tokens) in October 2026?
- As of 12 Oct 2026, the best cheap LLM (under $2 per million tokens) on independent benchmarks is MiMo-V2.6-Pro by Xiaomi (index 64.8 at $0.55/M), ahead of Gemini 3.8 Flash (medium) (index 64.6 at $1.50/M) and Gemini 3.7 Flash (medium) (index 63.3 at $1.50/M). BenchLeader reconciles 210 benchmarks from 42 benchmark publishers and rebuilds the ranking once a day (the run starts at 22:03 UTC).
- Which is the best value?
- MiMo-V2.6-Flash gives the most BenchLeader Index points per dollar among the top 15 here: 59.7 at $0.175 per million tokens blended, against $0.548 for MiMo-V2.6-Pro.
- How is this ranked?
- The highest-quality models with a blended list price below $2 per million tokens (three input tokens per output token), ranked on the BenchLeader Index. Every score comes from an independent publisher and links to its source on the model page; self-reported launch numbers are excluded.
Cite as: BenchLeader, “Best cheap LLM (October 2026)”, https://www.benchleader.com/best/cheap-llm, data as of 12 Oct 2026.