Best Foundation Models for Cheaper Inference

Compare the Top Foundation Models that integrate with Cheaper Inference as of August 2026

This a list of Foundation Models that integrate with Cheaper Inference. Use the filters on the left to add additional filters for products that have integrations with Cheaper Inference. View the products that work with Cheaper Inference in the table below.

What are Foundation Models for Cheaper Inference?

Foundation models are large-scale artificial intelligence models trained on vast and diverse datasets that serve as the underlying technology for a wide range of AI applications. These models learn general-purpose capabilities such as language understanding, reasoning, image recognition, code generation, speech processing, and multimodal comprehension, allowing them to be adapted or fine-tuned for specific tasks across industries. Foundation models power applications including chatbots, AI agents, search, content generation, software development, scientific research, and business automation. Many are available through cloud APIs, open-source distributions, and enterprise AI platforms, supporting custom model development, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and domain-specific optimization. By providing reusable, general-purpose intelligence, foundation models enable organizations to accelerate AI development, reduce implementation costs, and build sophisticated AI-powered applications. Compare and read user reviews of the best Foundation Models for Cheaper Inference currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.

  • 1
    Claude Opus 5

    Claude Opus 5

    Anthropic

    Claude Opus 5 is Anthropic’s advanced everyday AI model built for coding, knowledge work, problem-solving, visual outputs, and production AI workflows. The model delivers stronger performance than Opus 4.8 at the same base price and is positioned as a cost-effective alternative close to Claude Fable 5 frontier intelligence. Claude Opus 5 supports configurable effort settings so users can optimize for intelligence, speed, or token efficiency. It performs especially well on software engineering, automation, computer use, scientific research, and knowledge work evaluations. The model is available on Claude Max, Claude Pro, Claude API, Claude Code, and other Claude platforms, with Fast mode available at a higher price. Built for developers, researchers, enterprises, and everyday Claude users, Claude Opus 5 helps teams complete complex tasks with stronger verification, careful iteration, and practical cost efficiency.
    Starting Price: $5 per 1M tokens (input)
  • 2
    Gemini 3.7 Flash
    Gemini 3.7 Flash is Google’s most intelligent workhorse model yet for coding and agents, delivering substantial improvements across software engineering, knowledge work, web development, and complex business workflows. It shows stronger performance in debugging and issue resolution, higher first-pass code accuracy, and improved generation of production-ready code. For web development, the model creates more functional layouts and feature-complete applications in fewer prompts, with strong design adherence when working from screenshots, images, or complete design systems. In knowledge-dense fields such as finance, law, and biosciences, it provides improved reasoning, accuracy, and complex-document understanding. Gemini 3.7 Flash also performs more effectively on real-world workflow automation and multimodal tasks, supporting use cases ranging from interactive web experiences and data stories to robotics and dynamically generated 3D content.
    Starting Price: $0.75 per 1M tokens (input)
  • 3
    Gemini 3.6 Flash
    Gemini 3.6 Flash is Google’s newest Flash model built for efficient, reliable, production-scale AI agents. The model improves on Gemini 3.5 Flash with stronger coding, knowledge work, multimodal performance, computer use, and agentic workflow execution. Gemini 3.6 Flash is designed to use fewer output tokens, take fewer reasoning steps, reduce unnecessary tool calls, and lower the cost of complex AI tasks. It supports document parsing, chart analysis, data analysis, report drafting, code migrations, visual understanding, and multi-agent orchestration. The model is available through the Gemini API, Google AI Studio, Android Studio, Google Antigravity, Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, Gemini Enterprise app, and the Gemini app. Built for developers and enterprises, Gemini 3.6 Flash helps teams build faster, lower-cost, and more capable AI agents across coding, analysis, productivity, and multimodal workloads.
    Starting Price: $1.50 per 1M tokens (input)
  • 4
    GPT-5.6 Luna
    GPT-5.6 Luna is the fast and affordable model in OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 series, built to bring strong capability to users and developers who need practical intelligence with lower overhead. In the new GPT-5.6 naming system, the number identifies the model generation, while Sol, Terra, and Luna identify durable capability tiers that can advance on their own cadence, giving people and developers clearer choices across intelligence, speed, and cost. Luna sits alongside Sol, the flagship model, and Terra, the balanced model for everyday work, as part of a family designed for broader access to next-generation AI. During the limited preview, GPT-5.6 models are initially available through the API and Codex to a select group of trusted partners and organizations, with plans for broader availability in ChatGPT, Codex, and the API. OpenAI developed GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra, and Luna with its most robust safeguards to date, with configurations matched to each model’s capabilities.
    Starting Price: $0.20 per 1M tokens (input)
  • 5
    Claude Fable 5
    Claude Fable 5 is an advanced AI model from Anthropic designed to assist with software engineering, research, knowledge work, vision tasks, and complex reasoning. Built on the Mythos-class architecture, it delivers significantly improved performance across coding, analysis, and long-context workflows. The model can handle extended autonomous tasks while maintaining focus and consistency over large amounts of information. Claude Fable 5 integrates advanced reasoning, multimodal understanding, and memory capabilities to support professional and enterprise use cases. Anthropic has implemented specialized safeguards that automatically route certain high-risk cybersecurity, biology, chemistry, and model distillation requests to a different model. Claude Fable 5 helps organizations and professionals accelerate complex work while maintaining strong safety and governance controls.
    Starting Price: $10 per 1 million (input)
  • 6
    Kimi K3

    Kimi K3

    Moonshot AI

    Kimi K3 is Moonshot AI’s most capable model, built for frontier intelligence scenarios such as software engineering, knowledge work, deep reasoning, and multimodal understanding. The model has 2.8 trillion parameters and uses Kimi Delta Attention, a hybrid linear attention mechanism, along with Attention Residuals for long-context performance. Kimi K3 supports a 1 million token context window, making it useful for analyzing large codebases, long documents, complex knowledge bases, and multi-step workflows. It includes native visual understanding for images and videos, with support for structured message formats, base64 image input, uploaded video files, and multimodal reasoning. Developers can use Kimi K3 through an OpenAI-compatible API with support for streaming, structured JSON output, partial mode, custom tools, dynamic tool loading, and automatic context caching.
    Starting Price: $3 per 1M tokens (input)
  • 7
    Claude Sonnet 5
    Claude Sonnet 5 is Anthropic's latest AI model, designed to deliver stronger agentic capabilities for coding, reasoning, tool use, and knowledge work while maintaining the efficiency of the Sonnet family. The model can independently plan tasks, use external tools such as browsers and terminals, and complete complex workflows that previously required larger AI models. Sonnet 5 significantly improves upon Claude Sonnet 4.6 with better reasoning, coding performance, reduced hallucinations, stronger safety behavior, and more effective autonomous task execution. It is available across Claude plans and through the Claude API with OpenAI-style developer access for application integration. Anthropic also introduced lower introductory API pricing, making Sonnet 5 a cost-effective option for developers building AI-powered products. By combining advanced agentic capabilities with improved safety and competitive pricing, Claude Sonnet 5 helps developers build more capable AI applications.
    Starting Price: $2 per 1M tokens (input)
  • 8
    GPT-5.6 Terra
    GPT-5.6 Terra is a balanced model in the GPT-5.6 series designed for everyday work, coding, agentic workflows, cybersecurity support, biology analysis, and enterprise automation. It sits between GPT-5.6 Sol, the flagship model, and GPT-5.6 Luna, the faster and lower-cost option. Terra is positioned to deliver competitive performance to GPT-5.5 while being significantly cheaper to run. The model supports improved reasoning, coding, tool coordination, long-horizon workflows, and legitimate defensive security work. It is part of a model family built with layered safeguards, including trained refusals, real-time misuse classifiers, account-level review, differentiated access, monitoring, and continued red-team testing. GPT-5.6 Terra helps developers, enterprises, and technical teams access strong AI capabilities with a more practical balance of intelligence, speed, and cost.
    Starting Price: $2 per 1M tokens (input)
  • 9
    GLM-5.3
    GLM-5.3 is Z.ai’s frontier coding model designed for complex software engineering, long-horizon agent tasks, and advanced post-training research. The model uses the same base model as GLM-5.2, with improvements coming from scaled post-training across more environments, more diverse tasks, and larger compute investment. GLM-5.3 delivers stronger coding performance, better task ownership, improved benchmark results, and greater efficiency across realistic development workflows. It is built to handle complex coding tasks, production-style engineering work, research environments, automation tasks, and agentic workflows that require multi-step execution. The model also shows emergent cyber capabilities in vulnerability discovery and exploitation-chain reasoning, with safety evaluation and hardening planned before open-weight release.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 10
    GLM-5.2
    GLM-5.2 is an advanced AI foundation model designed to support complex reasoning, coding, and long-range agentic tasks. It helps developers, teams, and organizations build intelligent systems that can understand instructions, solve technical problems, and assist with demanding workflows. The model is especially useful for software engineering, automation, research, and productivity-focused applications. GLM-5.2 is built to handle large amounts of context, making it suitable for projects that require deeper understanding across extended conversations, documents, or codebases. Its mixture-of-experts design helps balance strong performance with more efficient model operation. GLM-5.2 gives businesses and developers a powerful AI tool for creating smarter applications, improving technical workflows, and supporting advanced digital experiences.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 11
    Grok 4.5

    Grok 4.5

    SpaceXAI

    Grok 4.5 is SpaceXAI’s advanced AI model built for coding, agentic tasks, engineering work, and knowledge-intensive productivity. The model is trained on coding, science, engineering, and math data, with reinforcement learning focused on multi-step software engineering and technical workflows. It is designed to handle real-world development tasks such as debugging, Rust and C/C++ work, terminal tasks, long-running agentic rollouts, and end-to-end app creation from a single prompt. Grok 4.5 is also built for fast serving, token efficiency, and lower-cost execution, with pricing based on input and output token usage. Beyond coding, the model supports business productivity tasks in Grok Build, including Excel modeling, PowerPoint diagram creation, Word writing, and research-assisted office workflows. Available through Grok Build, Cursor, and the SpaceXAI API console, Grok 4.5 gives developers and teams a high-performance model for building software, automating work, and more.
    Starting Price: $2 per million input tokens
  • 12
    Muse Spark 1.2
    Muse Spark 1.2 is Meta’s coding-focused model update designed to power Muse Code and improve software engineering workflows. The model is built for code generation, complex debugging, codebase understanding, long-horizon development tasks, and end-to-end developer workflows. Muse Spark 1.2 was co-trained with Muse Code to improve performance inside the terminal coding agent environment. It supports planning, goal conditioning, context compaction, subagent coordination, and iterative coding workflows across large repositories. The model was trained with expanded coding compute, diverse development environments, self-improvement loops, and long-running engineering tasks. Built for AI developers and software teams, Muse Spark 1.2 helps agents plan, write, validate, debug, and optimize code with greater autonomy.
    Starting Price: $1.25 per 1M tokens (input)
  • 13
    GPT-5.5

    GPT-5.5

    OpenAI

    GPT-5.5 is an advanced AI model designed to handle complex, real-world tasks with greater autonomy and efficiency. It quickly understands user intent and can execute multi-step workflows such as coding, research, data analysis, and document creation with minimal guidance. Instead of requiring step-by-step instructions, GPT-5.5 plans tasks, uses tools, evaluates outputs, and continues working until completion. It excels in knowledge work, software development, and analytical problem-solving, helping users move from idea to execution faster. The model is built to operate across tools and environments, making it highly effective for modern digital workflows. With strong reasoning and persistence, GPT-5.5 enables individuals and teams to complete demanding work more efficiently and accurately.
    Starting Price: $5 per 1M tokens (input)
  • 14
    Claude Opus 4.8
    Claude Opus 4.8 is a powerful AI model from Anthropic designed to deliver stronger coding, reasoning, agentic workflows, and advanced collaboration capabilities for developers, enterprises, and AI-powered productivity tasks. The model builds on Claude Opus 4.7 with improvements across coding benchmarks, practical knowledge work, alignment, and reliability while maintaining the same pricing structure. Claude Opus 4.8 introduces enhanced honesty and reasoning behavior, making it less likely to generate unsupported claims or overlook flaws during complex tasks such as software development and agent execution. The release also includes new features such as effort control settings, fast mode for lower-cost high-speed processing, and dynamic workflows in Claude Code that allow the system to coordinate hundreds of parallel subagents for large-scale tasks.
    Starting Price: $5 per 1M (input)
  • 15
    Gemini 3.5 Flash
    Gemini 3.5 Flash is Google’s latest frontier AI model designed to combine advanced intelligence, high-speed performance, and agentic workflow execution for developers, enterprises, and everyday users. Built as part of the Gemini 3.5 family, the model excels at coding, long-horizon reasoning, multimodal understanding, and complex multi-step automation tasks while delivering significantly faster output speeds than many competing frontier models. Gemini 3.5 Flash powers AI agents capable of planning, executing, and managing workflows such as application development, codebase maintenance, data analysis, and financial document preparation through the Antigravity harness. The model also supports rich multimodal experiences by generating interactive graphics, dynamic web interfaces, animations, and advanced visual content. Gemini 3.5 Flash is integrated across Google products including the Gemini app, Google Search AI Mode, Google Antigravity, Google AI Studio, Android Studio, and more.
    Starting Price: $1.50 per 1M tokens (input)
  • 16
    Claude Opus 4.7
    Claude Opus 4.7 is the latest Anthropic AI model release designed to significantly improve performance in advanced software engineering and complex problem-solving tasks. It builds upon the previous Opus 4.6 model by delivering stronger results on difficult coding challenges and long-running workflows. The model is known for its ability to follow instructions precisely and verify its own outputs for greater reliability. It also introduces enhanced multimodal capabilities, particularly in processing high-resolution images with improved accuracy. Opus 4.7 supports more detailed visual tasks such as analyzing dense screenshots and extracting data from complex diagrams. In professional settings, it produces higher-quality outputs including documents, presentations, and user interfaces. The model includes updated safety features that detect and block high-risk cybersecurity-related requests.
    Starting Price: $5 per million tokens (input)
  • 17
    Claude Opus 4.6
    Claude Opus 4.6 is an advanced AI model developed by Anthropic, designed for high-level reasoning, coding, and knowledge work tasks. It introduces significant improvements in coding, debugging, and code review capabilities. The model can handle long, complex workflows and sustain agentic tasks with greater reliability. It features a 1 million token context window in beta, enabling it to process and retain large amounts of information. Claude Opus 4.6 is optimized for tasks such as financial analysis, research, and document creation. It also integrates with tools like Excel and PowerPoint for enhanced productivity. Overall, it is a state-of-the-art AI model built for complex, real-world professional applications.
  • 18
    Claude Sonnet 4.6
    Claude Sonnet 4.6 is Anthropic’s most advanced Sonnet model to date, delivering significant upgrades across coding, computer use, long-context reasoning, agent planning, and knowledge work. It introduces a 1 million token context window in beta, allowing users to analyze entire codebases, lengthy contracts, or large research collections in a single session. The model demonstrates major improvements in instruction following, consistency, and reduced hallucinations compared to previous Sonnet versions. In developer testing, users strongly preferred Sonnet 4.6 over Sonnet 4.5 and even favored it over Opus 4.5 in many coding scenarios. Its enhanced computer-use capabilities enable it to interact with real software interfaces similarly to a human, improving automation for legacy systems without APIs. Sonnet 4.6 also performs strongly on major benchmarks, approaching Opus-level intelligence at a more accessible price point.
  • 19
    GLM-5

    GLM-5

    Z.ai

    GLM-5 is Z.ai’s latest large language model built for complex systems engineering and long-horizon agentic tasks. It scales significantly beyond GLM-4.5, increasing total parameters and training data while integrating DeepSeek Sparse Attention to reduce deployment costs without sacrificing long-context capacity. The model combines enhanced pre-training with a new asynchronous reinforcement learning infrastructure called slime, improving training efficiency and post-training refinement. GLM-5 achieves best-in-class performance among open-source models across reasoning, coding, and agent benchmarks, narrowing the gap with leading frontier models. It ranks highly on evaluations such as Vending Bench 2, demonstrating strong long-term planning and operational capabilities. The model is open-sourced under the MIT License.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 20
    GLM-5.1
    GLM-5.1 is the latest iteration of Z.ai’s GLM series, designed as a frontier-level, agent-oriented AI model optimized for coding, reasoning, and long-horizon workflows. It builds on the GLM-5 architecture, which uses a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) design to deliver high performance while keeping inference costs efficient, and is part of a broader push toward open-weight, developer-accessible models. A core focus of GLM-5.1 is enabling agentic behavior, meaning it can plan, execute, and iterate across multi-step tasks rather than simply responding to single prompts. It is specifically designed to handle complex workflows such as debugging code, navigating repositories, and executing chained operations with sustained context. Compared to earlier models, GLM-5.1 improves reliability in long interactions, maintaining coherence across extended sessions and reducing breakdowns in multi-step reasoning.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 21
    GPT-4.1 nano
    GPT-4.1 nano is the smallest and most efficient version of OpenAI's GPT-4.1 model, optimized for low-latency, cost-effective AI processing. Despite its compact size, GPT-4.1 nano delivers strong performance with a 1 million token context window, making it ideal for applications like classification, autocompletion, and smaller-scale tasks that require fast responses. It provides a highly efficient solution for businesses and developers who need an AI model that balances speed, cost, and performance.
    Starting Price: $0.10 per 1M tokens (input)
  • 22
    GPT-5 mini
    GPT-5 mini is a streamlined, faster, and more affordable variant of OpenAI’s GPT-5, optimized for well-defined tasks and precise prompts. It supports text and image inputs and delivers high-quality text outputs with a 400,000-token context window and up to 128,000 output tokens. This model excels at rapid response times, making it suitable for applications requiring fast, accurate language understanding without the full overhead of GPT-5. Pricing is cost-effective, with input tokens at $0.25 per million and output tokens at $2 per million, providing savings over the flagship model. GPT-5 mini supports advanced features like streaming, function calling, structured outputs, and fine-tuning, but does not support audio input or image generation. It integrates well with various API endpoints including chat completions, responses, and embeddings, making it versatile for many AI-powered tasks.
    Starting Price: $0.25 per 1M tokens
  • 23
    GPT-5 nano
    GPT-5 nano is OpenAI’s fastest and most affordable version of the GPT-5 family, designed for high-speed text processing tasks like summarization and classification. It supports text and image inputs, generating high-quality text outputs with a large 400,000-token context window and up to 128,000 output tokens. GPT-5 nano offers very fast response times, making it ideal for applications requiring quick turnaround without sacrificing quality. Pricing is extremely competitive, with input tokens costing $0.05 per million and output tokens $0.40 per million, making it accessible for budget-conscious projects. The model supports advanced API features such as streaming, function calling, structured outputs, and fine-tuning. While it supports image input, it does not handle audio input or web search, focusing on core text tasks efficiently.
    Starting Price: $0.05 per 1M tokens
  • 24
    GLM-4.6
    GLM-4.6 advances upon its predecessor with stronger reasoning, coding, and agentic capabilities: it demonstrates clear improvements in inferential performance, supports tool use during inference, and more effectively integrates into agent frameworks. In benchmark tests spanning reasoning, coding, and agents, GLM-4.6 outperforms GLM-4.5 and shows competitive strength against models such as DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp and Claude Sonnet 4, though it still trails Claude Sonnet 4.5 in pure coding performance. In real-world tests using an extended “CC-Bench” suite across front-end development, tool building, data analysis, and algorithmic tasks, GLM-4.6 beats GLM-4.5 and approaches parity with Claude Sonnet 4, winning ~48.6% of head-to-head comparisons, while also achieving ~15% better token efficiency. GLM-4.6 is available via the Z.ai API, and developers can integrate it as an LLM backend or agent core using the platform’s API.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 25
    Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
    Qwen3.5-35B-A3B is part of the Qwen3.5 “Medium” model series, designed as a highly efficient, multimodal foundation model that balances strong reasoning ability with practical deployment requirements. It uses a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture with 35 billion total parameters but activates only about 3 billion per token, allowing it to deliver performance comparable to much larger models while significantly reducing computational cost. The model integrates a hybrid attention mechanism that combines linear attention with standard attention layers, enabling efficient long-context processing and improved scalability for complex tasks. As a native vision-language model, it can process both text and visual inputs, supporting use cases such as multimodal reasoning, coding, and agent-based workflows. It is designed to function as a general-purpose “AI agent,” capable of planning, tool use, and structured problem solving rather than just conversational responses.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 26
    GPT-5.5 Pro
    GPT-5.5 Pro is an advanced AI model designed to handle complex, real-world work with greater autonomy and efficiency. It understands user intent quickly and can execute multi-step tasks such as coding, research, data analysis, and document creation with minimal guidance. The model is built to plan, use tools, and refine its outputs until tasks are complete. It excels in knowledge work, software development, and analytical problem-solving. With strong reasoning and persistence, GPT-5.5 Pro can manage long-running workflows across tools and systems. It delivers high-quality results while maintaining speed and efficiency. Overall, it enables individuals and teams to complete demanding tasks faster and more accurately.
    Starting Price: $30 per 1M tokens (input)
  • 27
    Gemini 3 Flash
    Gemini 3 Flash is Google’s latest AI model built to deliver frontier intelligence with exceptional speed and efficiency. It combines Pro-level reasoning with Flash-level latency, making advanced AI more accessible and affordable. The model excels in complex reasoning, multimodal understanding, and agentic workflows while using fewer tokens for everyday tasks. Gemini 3 Flash is designed to scale across consumer apps, developer tools, and enterprise platforms. It supports rapid coding, data analysis, video understanding, and interactive application development. By balancing performance, cost, and speed, Gemini 3 Flash redefines what fast AI can achieve.
  • 28
    Gemini 2.5 Flash
    Gemini 2.5 Flash is a powerful, low-latency AI model introduced by Google, designed for high-volume applications where speed and cost-efficiency are key. It delivers optimized performance for use cases like customer service, virtual assistants, and real-time data processing. With its dynamic reasoning capabilities, Gemini 2.5 Flash automatically adjusts processing time based on query complexity, offering granular control over the balance between speed, accuracy, and cost. It is ideal for businesses needing scalable AI solutions that maintain quality and efficiency.
  • 29
    Claude Sonnet 4.5
    Claude Sonnet 4.5 is Anthropic’s latest frontier model, designed to excel in long-horizon coding, agentic workflows, and intensive computer use while maintaining safety and alignment. It achieves state-of-the-art performance on the SWE-bench Verified benchmark (for software engineering) and leads on OSWorld (a computer use benchmark), with the ability to sustain focus over 30 hours on complex, multi-step tasks. The model introduces improvements in tool handling, memory management, and context processing, enabling more sophisticated reasoning, better domain understanding (from finance and law to STEM), and deeper code comprehension. It supports context editing and memory tools to sustain long conversations or multi-agent tasks, and allows code execution and file creation within Claude apps. Sonnet 4.5 is deployed at AI Safety Level 3 (ASL-3), with classifiers protecting against inputs or outputs tied to risky domains, and includes mitigations against prompt injection.
  • 30
    Claude Opus 4.5
    Claude Opus 4.5 is Anthropic’s newest flagship model, delivering major improvements in reasoning, coding, agentic workflows, and real-world problem solving. It outperforms previous models and leading competitors on benchmarks such as SWE-bench, multilingual coding tests, and advanced agent evaluations. Opus 4.5 also introduces stronger safety features, including significantly higher resistance to prompt injection and improved alignment across sensitive tasks. Developers gain new controls through the Claude API—like effort parameters, context compaction, and advanced tool use—allowing for more efficient, longer-running agentic workflows. Product updates across Claude, Claude Code, the Chrome extension, and Excel integrations expand how users interact with the model for software engineering, research, and everyday productivity. Overall, Claude Opus 4.5 marks a substantial step forward in capability, reliability, and usability for developers, enterprises, and end users.
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