What is the cheapest model for sorting and tagging?

GLM-5.3-Flash at Merge Gateway, $0.055 per 10,000 items on $0.01 / $0.05 per million tokens in and out, read on 16 Sept 2026.

How is the cost per unit worked out?

An item is about 300 tokens in and 20 out. Multiply that by 10,000 and price it at each row's own input and output rate. Nothing else is counted: no cache discount, no batch rate, no free tier.

Why do only 188 models qualify?

The job needs 8k of context or more, structured output. Models that fall short are still in the index, they just cannot do this job as described.

How current are these prices?

Prices are read daily from 212 providers' public catalogs and this ranking recomputes with them. Last refresh: 16 Sept 2026.

Best AI model for sorting and tagging.

prices as of 16 Sept 2026 · re-ranked daily · 188 qualifying models

Tickets into queues, reviews into sentiments, products into categories. Each call is tiny and there are an enormous number of them, so the price per million tokens is the whole story. We count only models with 8k of context or more and structured output, and 188 of the 337 we track qualify. The cheapest of them costs $0.055 per 10,000 items at Merge Gateway. They are ranked by what the work costs, not by the price per million tokens, because a model that is cheap to prompt and dear to answer looks different once you know the shape of the job.

The cheapest model that can do this job is GLM-5.3-Flash at Merge Gateway: $0.055 per 10,000 items, read on 16 Sept 2026.

Cheapest that qualifies

GLM-5.3-Flash

Merge Gateway

$0.055per 10,000 items

$0.01 / $0.05 per M tokens · $0.275 at list

lowest cost per 10,000 items

Cheapest from the maker

GPT-5.6 Luna Pro

OpenAI

$0.42per 10,000 items

$0.10 / $0.60 per M tokens · $0.42 at list

bought from the lab that trained it

Most context

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash

TrustedRouter

$0.143per 10,000 items

$0.04 / $0.08 per M tokens · $0.57 at list

the longest single call on this list

What actually matters here

Structured output: A label from a fixed list, every time. Held to a schema, the answer needs no parsing and no retry when the model gets chatty.
Volume is the point: This is priced per 10,000 items rather than per 1,000, because that is the scale at which people run it, and where a fraction of a cent starts to matter.
Small models do this well: Sorting is the job where the cheapest models hold up best against the expensive ones. Start at the top of this list, not the bottom.

Cheapest 10 for sorting and tagging

1
Merge Gateway
GLM-5.3-Flash
$0.055 per 10,000 items · $0.01 / $0.05 per M tokens · 1M contextHosts the open weights on its own servers, so the price is its own, not a resale. Precision not disclosed.
✓ 1M context✓ tool calling✓ structured output
$0.10/M tokens
2
Inference
Llama 3.2 3B Instruct
$0.064 per 10,000 items · $0.02 / $0.02 per M tokens · 131k contextHosts the open weights on its own servers, so the price is its own, not a resale. Precision not disclosed.
✓ 131k context✓ structured output✓ open weights
$0.08/M tokens
3
Kilo Gateway
Llama 3.1 8B Instruct
$0.068 per 10,000 items · $0.02 / $0.04 per M tokens · 131k contextRoutes to a host serving the open weights; precision not disclosed.
✓ 131k context✓ tool calling✓ structured output
$0.10/M tokens
Kilo Gateway ↗
4
Eden AI
Qwen3.7 Flash
$0.0754 per 10,000 items · $0.02 / $0.08 per M tokens · 1M contextAlibaba's China-region price list, which is lower than the international one. A region, not a deal.
✓ 1M context✓ tool calling✓ structured output
$0.14/M tokens
Eden AI ↗
5
OpenRouter
Ling 3.0 Flash
$0.0756 per 10,000 items · $0.02 / $0.06 per M tokens · 262k contextThe same price OpenRouter charges.
✓ 262k context✓ tool calling✓ structured output
$0.13/M tokens
OpenRouter ↗
6
Kilo Gateway
gpt-oss-20b
$0.08 per 10,000 items · $0.02 / $0.10 per M tokens · 131k contextRoutes to a host serving the open weights; precision not disclosed.
✓ 131k context✓ tool calling✓ structured output
$0.16/M tokens
Kilo Gateway ↗
7
NanoGPT
Mercury 2.5
$0.121 per 10,000 items · $0.04 / $0.004 per M tokens · 260k contextThe same price Inception charges.
✓ 260k context✓ tool calling✓ structured output
$0.12/M tokens
NanoGPT ↗
8
LLM Gateway
gpt-oss-120b
$0.124 per 10,000 items · $0.03 / $0.14 per M tokens · 131k contextRoutes to a host serving the open weights; precision not disclosed.
✓ 131k context✓ tool calling✓ structured output
$0.24/M tokens
LLM Gateway ↗
9
Merge Gateway
Gemma 3 4B
$0.136 per 10,000 items · $0.04 / $0.08 per M tokens · 131k contextHosts the open weights on its own servers, so the price is its own, not a resale. Precision not disclosed.
✓ 131k context✓ structured output✓ reads images
$0.20/M tokens
10
OpenRouter
DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731
$0.14 per 10,000 items · $0.04 / $0.10 per M tokens · 1M contextRoutes to a host serving the open weights; precision not disclosed.
✓ 1M context✓ tool calling✓ structured output
$0.22/M tokens
OpenRouter ↗

An item is about 300 tokens in and 20 out. A cost per 10,000 items is that multiplied out at the row's own input and output rate. The price beside it is the standard price, three parts input to one part output per million tokens, so the two numbers answer different questions: $0.10 per million tokens is what the model costs, and $0.055 per 10,000 items is what the work costs.

Frequently asked

What is the cheapest model for sorting and tagging?: GLM-5.3-Flash at Merge Gateway, $0.055 per 10,000 items on $0.01 / $0.05 per million tokens in and out, read on 16 Sept 2026.
How is the cost per unit worked out?: An item is about 300 tokens in and 20 out. Multiply that by 10,000 and price it at each row's own input and output rate. Nothing else is counted: no cache discount, no batch rate, no free tier.
Why do only 188 models qualify?: The job needs 8k of context or more, structured output. Models that fall short are still in the index, they just cannot do this job as described.
How current are these prices?: Prices are read daily from 212 providers' public catalogs and this ranking recomputes with them. Last refresh: 16 Sept 2026.