Use Case

Best AI Models for Chatbots 2026 - Pricing & Comparison

Find the optimal AI model for your chatbot. Compare costs, latency, and quality for customer support applications.

Input/Output Ratio
70% / 30%
Typical for this use case
Cheapest Option
$1.00
per 10M tokens/month
Top Pick
gpt-5-mini
Quality + Value balanced

Cheapest Models for Chatbot / Customer Support

Based on 70% input / 30% output token ratio typical for this use case.

RankModelCost/10M tokensvs Best Quality
#1ministral-8bMistral$1.00-80%
#2ministral-14bMistral$1.50-71%
#3deepseek-chatDeepSeek$1.82-64%
#4gpt-4.1-nanoOpenAI$1.90-63%
#5gemini-2.5-flash-liteGoogle$1.90-63%

Key Considerations

  • *High volume = prioritize cost over quality
  • *Consider latency for real-time chat
  • *Cache common responses for cost savings
  • *Use smaller models for routing/classification

Optimize Your Costs

Track every API call and get AI-powered recommendations to reduce costs by 20-40%.

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