Model Price-Performance Analysis 2024
With so many LLMs on the market, choosing the right one for your use case can be challenging. This analysis provides an objective comparison of leading models based on their price-performance ratio.
Methodology
We evaluated each model on:
- Raw Performance: Scores on standard benchmarks including MMLU, HellaSwag, GSM8K, and HumanEval
- Cost Structure: Price per million tokens for both input and output
- Context Window: Maximum tokens the model can process in a single request
- Practical Tasks: Real-world performance on summarization, code generation, and creative writing
Results Summary
Top Performers by Category
Overall Value
Claude 3 Haiku offers exceptional value across most use cases, with performance close to models costing 5-10x more.
Raw Performance
GPT-4o and Claude 3 Opus lead the pack on benchmarks, with GPT-4o having a slight edge on coding and mathematical reasoning.
Budget Option
Mistral Small and GPT-3.5-Turbo remain excellent budget options, with the former excelling at structured tasks and the latter at creative content.
Context Kings
Gemini 1.5 Pro/Flash stand out with their massive 1M token context windows at reasonable price points.
Detailed Price-Performance Ratio
To calculate the price-performance ratio, we divided benchmark scores by cost per million tokens:
- Claude 3 Haiku: 8.2
- GPT-4o-mini: 7.9
- Mistral Medium: 6.7
- GPT-3.5-Turbo: 6.5
- Gemini 1.5 Flash: 6.3
- Claude 3 Sonnet: 5.8
- GPT-4o: 5.4
- Claude 3 Opus: 4.2
- GPT-4 Turbo: 4.0
Recommendations
Based on our analysis, we recommend:
- For general purpose use: Claude 3 Haiku or GPT-4o-mini
- For mission-critical applications: GPT-4o or Claude 3 Opus
- For processing long documents: Gemini 1.5 Flash
- For high-volume applications: GPT-3.5-Turbo or Mistral Small
Use our token calculator to estimate your costs for each model and make an informed decision based on your specific needs.