Alternatives
Best cheaper alternatives to Claude 3 Sonnet
Looking for a cheaper or smarter replacement for Claude 3 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 45 200K context
Gemini 2.5 Flash86% CHEAPER
Google
Better valueSmarter (68 vs 45)Larger contextMore modalitiesSame category
$0.3 in · $2.5 out / 1M Tokens 68 1.0M ctx 80%
Gemini 2.0 Flash97% CHEAPER
Google
Better valueSmarter (56 vs 45)Larger contextMore modalitiesSame category
$0.1 in · $0.4 out / 1M Tokens 56 1.0M ctx 80%
o395% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Better valueSmarter (78 vs 45)Same category
$0.000263 in · $1.25 out / 1M Tokens 78 200K ctx 82%
DeepSeek-R1 (Reasoner)96% CHEAPER
DeepSeek
Better valueSmarter (73 vs 45)Same category
$0.14 in · $0.55 out / 1M Tokens 73 64K ctx 80%
Gemini 1.5 Flash98% CHEAPER
Google
Better valueSmarter (48 vs 45)Larger contextMore modalitiesSame category
$0.075 in · $0.3 out / 1M Tokens 48 1.0M ctx 98%
o195% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Better valueSmarter (71 vs 45)Same category
$0.000263 in · $1.25 out / 1M Tokens 71 200K ctx 82%
o4 Mini95% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Better valueSmarter (70 vs 45)Same category
$0.000263 in · $1.25512 out / 1M Tokens 70 200K ctx 82%
Gemini 1.5 Flash-8B99% CHEAPER
Google
Better valueLarger contextMore modalitiesSame category
$0.0375 in · $0.15 out / 1M Tokens 36 1.0M ctx 98%
GPT-4o95% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Better valueSmarter (60 vs 45)More modalitiesSame category
$0.000263 in · $1.25 out / 1M Tokens 60 128K ctx 82%
GPT 4.1 Mini95% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Better valueSmarter (53 vs 45)Larger contextSame category
$0.000263 in · $1.25512 out / 1M Tokens 53 1.0M ctx 82%
DeepSeek R184% CHEAPER
DeepSeek
Better valueSmarter (73 vs 45)Same category
$0.55 in · $2.19 out / 1M Tokens 73 64K ctx 98%
DeepSeek V392% CHEAPER
DeepSeek
Better valueSmarter (63 vs 45)Same category
$0.27 in · $1.1 out / 1M Tokens 63 64K ctx 98%
DeepSeek-V3 (Chat)98% CHEAPER
DeepSeek
Better valueSmarter (63 vs 45)Same category
$0.07 in · $0.27 out / 1M Tokens 63 64K ctx 80%
GPT 4.1 Nano95% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Better valueLarger contextSame category
$0.000263 in · $1.25512 out / 1M Tokens 41 1.0M ctx 82%
Qwen Plus90% CHEAPER
Alibaba Cloud
Better valueSmarter (55 vs 45)Same category
$0.4 in · $1.2 out / 1M Tokens 55 131K ctx 78%
Llama 3.2 90B Vision96% CHEAPER
Meta
Better valueSmarter (54 vs 45)Same category
$0.23 in · $0.23 out / 1M Tokens 54 128K ctx 85%
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct86% CHEAPER
Together AI
Better valueSmarter (58 vs 45)Same category
$1.04 in · $0.15 out / 1M Tokens 58 128K ctx 68%
Qwen2.5 Math 72B Instruct86% CHEAPER
Alibaba Cloud
Better valueSmarter (58 vs 45)Same category
$0.574 in · $1.721 out / 1M Tokens 58 4K ctx 78%
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.