Cheapest Decision Models per 1,000 Decisions
Cost per 1,000 decisions is the hosted input price at 200 input tokens per decision, the size of a typical state plus questions. Models below the median Decision Index score are left out, so the list is the cheapest of the competent ones; hosted models the Index has not scored yet are kept.
Ranked list (top 25)
| # | Model | Decision Index | ECE | p50 latency | Per 1k decisions | Params |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Baseten: Elephant 1 (free) Baseten | — | — | — | Free | — |
| 2 | Baseten: Mammoth 1 (free) Baseten | — | — | — | Free | — |
| 3 | Mercury Decide Inception | — | — | — | Free | — |
| 4 | SimpleJev Qwen3.6-35B-A3B (Featherless) Featherless AIOpen weights | — | — | — | Free | — |
| 5 | Span-01 Lite Respan | — | — | — | Free | — |
| 6 | Perplexity: Decider Flash Latest Perplexity | — | — | — | $0.0020 | — |
| 7 | Perplexity: Decider Flash V1.2 Perplexity | — | — | — | $0.0020 | — |
| 8 | Respan: Span-02 Respan | — | — | — | $0.0020 | — |
| 9 | Cloudflare clef-flash CloudflareOpen weights | 44.4 | 0.025 | 53 ms | $0.0038 | 10B |
| 10 | Perplexity Decider v1.1 (27B) PerplexityOpen weights | 62.8 | 0.071 | 104 ms | $0.0040 | 28B |
| 11 | Liquid d1 (hosted) Liquid AI | — | — | — | $0.0040 | — |
| 12 | Perplexity: Decider Latest Perplexity | — | — | — | $0.0040 | — |
| 13 | Perplexity: Decider V1.2 Perplexity | — | — | — | $0.0040 | — |
| 14 | Span-01 Respan | — | — | — | $0.0040 | — |
| 15 | Kai 1 Hanzo AI | — | — | — | $0.0042 | — |
| 16 | meraGPT Decider 1 meraGPT (Okyasoft) | — | — | — | $0.0060 | — |
| 17 | Vansa-3.4 Vansa | — | — | — | $0.0068 | — |
| 18 | Nace.AI Drex v1.5 Nace.AIOpen weights | 45.8 | 0.090 | 54 ms | $0.0080 | 9B |
| 19 | Celeris-1 Decision Celeris | — | — | — | $0.0080 | — |
| 20 | ScaleDown Classify-1 ScaleDown | — | — | — | $0.0080 | — |
| 21 | Jev TypeSafe AI | 60.2 | 0.080 | 196 ms | $0.0084 | — |
| 22 | Cloudflare clef CloudflareOpen weights | 54.9 | 0.040 | 102 ms | $0.0084 | 28B |
| 23 | LiquidAI: d1-ultra LiquidAI | — | — | — | $0.0084 | — |
| 24 | Microsoft-Decision-1 Microsoft | — | — | — | $0.0084 | — |
| 25 | TypeSafe: Jev 1.14 TypeSafe | — | — | — | $0.0084 | — |
Scores, calibration (ECE) and latency from the Jev Decision Index; cost per 1,000 decisions at 200 input tokens each. Updated daily.
More decision-model rankings
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest decision model?
Baseten: Elephant 1 (free) is the cheapest hosted decision model in our data that is not below the median Decision Index score.
How is cost per 1,000 decisions calculated?
Input price per 1M tokens × 200 tokens × 1,000 decisions. Decision models return probabilities rather than text, so output tokens are negligible.
Is self-hosting an open decision model cheaper?
At high volume, usually: small open models run on a CPU, and the cost is the compute you already pay for. See the open-weights and CPU rankings.