Anthropic
Alternatives

Best cheaper alternatives to Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Looking for a cheaper or smarter replacement for Claude 3.5 Sonnet by Anthropic? We compared every LLM model with verifiable pricing on real input/output cost, context window, intelligence and modalities. 18 options are meaningfully cheaper.

Category: LLM Intelligence 62 200K context
Google
Gemini 2.5 Flash86% CHEAPER
Google
Better valueSmarter (68 vs 62)Larger contextMore modalitiesSame category
Google
Gemini 1.5 Flash-8B99% CHEAPER
Google
Better valueLarger contextMore modalitiesSame category
Google
Gemini 1.5 Flash98% CHEAPER
Google
Better valueLarger contextMore modalitiesSame category
Google
Gemini 2.0 Flash97% CHEAPER
Google
Better valueLarger contextMore modalitiesSame category
OpenAI
o395% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Better valueSmarter (78 vs 62)Same category
OpenAI
GPT 4.1 Mini95% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Better valueLarger contextSame category
OpenAI
GPT 4.1 Nano95% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Better valueLarger contextSame category
DeepSeek
DeepSeek-R1 (Reasoner)96% CHEAPER
DeepSeek
Better valueSmarter (73 vs 62)Same category
OpenAI
o195% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Better valueSmarter (71 vs 62)Same category
OpenAI
GPT-4o95% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Better valueMore modalitiesSame category
OpenAI
GPT-4o Mini95% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Better valueMore modalitiesSame category
OpenAI
o4 Mini95% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Better valueSmarter (70 vs 62)Same category
DeepSeek
DeepSeek R184% CHEAPER
DeepSeek
Better valueSmarter (73 vs 62)Same category
Mistral AI
Ministral 3 8B98% CHEAPER
Mistral AI
Better valueSame category
Mistral AI
Mistral Nemo95% CHEAPER
Mistral AI
Better valueSame category
DeepSeek
DeepSeek V392% CHEAPER
DeepSeek
Better valueSame category
Anthropic
Claude 3 Haiku92% CHEAPER
Anthropic
Better valueSame category
Mistral AI
Mistral Small98% CHEAPER
Mistral AI
Better valueSame category

Costs are normalised to a blended 1M-token workload (or per-unit price for non-token models) using each model's latest verified pricing. Models with pricing under review are excluded from recommendations.