DeepInfra is the host that keeps winning our weekly price checks: of the 88 model tables we track, it holds the cheapest verified endpoint for more open-weight LLMs than any other provider. This page collects what DeepInfra actually costs across the models we verify, where it is beatable, and the catches to know before moving volume.
Numbers below are from our latest verified check (see the live rankings for the current table per model; prices move monthly).
DeepInfra LLM pricing, per 1M output tokens
| Model | DeepInfra | Cheapest rival we track |
|---|---|---|
| Mistral Nemo | 4 cents | Mistral official, 15 cents |
| Llama 3.1 8B | 5 cents | Novita, 5 cents |
| Mistral Small 3 | 8 cents | Mistral official, 30 cents |
| gpt-oss-20b | 14 cents | Novita, 15 cents |
| gpt-oss-120b | 17 cents | Novita, 25 cents |
| Llama 4 Scout | 30 cents | Groq, 34 cents |
| Qwen2.5 72B | 40 cents | Novita, 40 cents |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 60 cents | Novita and Together, 85 cents |
| DeepSeek-V3 | 89 cents | Novita, 1.12 dollars |
| Qwen3 Coder 480B | 1.00 dollar | Novita, 1.30 dollars |
| Kimi K2 | 2.00 dollars | Novita, 2.50 dollars |
| DeepSeek-R1 | 2.15 dollars | Nebius, 2.40 dollars |
Two patterns stand out. First, DeepInfra is frequently 50 to 75 percent below the model maker's own endpoint (Mistral Small 3 at 8 cents versus 30 official). Second, its margin over the next-cheapest host is usually small, which means you are not locked in: if DeepInfra changes prices, the switch away is cheap too.
Transcription: the quiet standout
DeepInfra serves Whisper large v3 at $0.00045 per minute in our latest check, the lowest rate we track anywhere, several times below Groq's $0.0019 and roughly 13x below OpenAI's hosted Whisper. If you transcribe at volume, this single row can dominate your savings. Compare the full table on the Whisper ranking page.
Where DeepInfra does not win
- Frontier models: no GPT, Claude, or Gemini; it serves open weights only.
- Peak speed: Groq and Cerebras deliver several times the tokens per second on the models they share. If latency is your constraint, cheap-per-token is not the metric.
- A few tables: OpenRouter routes Llama 3.3 70B lower at 32 cents, and Hyperbolic leads Qwen3 235B.
Things to know before switching
- The API is OpenAI-compatible; switching is a base URL and key change for most stacks.
- Rate limits scale with prepaid balance; check your tier before pointing production at it.
- Prices genuinely move: our last two checks caught DeepInfra cutting gpt-oss-120b from 19 to 17 cents and Mistral Small 3 from 20 to 8 cents, but also small increases elsewhere. Bookmark the live rankings rather than this snapshot.
Bottom line
DeepInfra is the default answer to "where do I run open-weight models cheaply" in 2026: most-frequent winner across our verified tables, dramatic savings on Whisper, OpenAI-compatible switching. Verify the current number for your exact model on the rankings, and if you are early stage, stack startup credits from the catalog before you spend cash anywhere.
Related reading: cheapest AI inference APIs, Novita AI pricing, LLM API pricing comparison.