Cheapest Chinese AI models by category

The lowest list price in each category across 111 Chinese models, at provider list price with a 0% platform fee. 5 models are free outright.

Chat / LLM: cheapest is Hunyuan MT2 Lite (Tencent) at $0.043 flat
Image: cheapest is Wan 2.2 T2I Flash (Alibaba Cloud) at $0.021 per generation
Video: cheapest is Seedance 2.0 Fast (ByteDance) at $0.054 flat
3D: cheapest is Hunyuan 3D Motion (Tencent) at $0.185 per generation
Audio: cheapest is Qwen3 TTS Flash (Alibaba Cloud) at $0.015 flat
Embedding: cheapest is Kinfra VL Embedding 2B (Tencent (Kinfra)) at $0.077 per image

Cheapest Chat / LLM (top 5 by list price)

Model	Provider	List price	Unit
Hunyuan MT2 Lite	Tencent	$0.043	flat
Hunyuan MT2 Plus	Tencent	$0.072	flat
Doubao-Seed-2.0-Lite	ByteDance	$0.075	flat
GLM-5.3-Flash	Zhipu AI	$0.080	flat
GLM-4.6V API	Zhipu AI	$0.100	per 1M tokens

Cheapest Image (top 5 by list price)

Model	Provider	List price	Unit
Wan 2.2 T2I Flash	Alibaba Cloud	$0.021	per generation
WAND Vega Image Lite	Tencent (WAND Vega)	$0.025	per generation
Seedream 5.0	ByteDance	$0.027	per generation
Vidu Image Q2	Vidu (Shengshu)	$0.029	per generation
Wan 2.5 T2I Preview	Alibaba Cloud	$0.031	per generation

Cheapest Video (top 5 by list price)

Model	Provider	List price	Unit
Seedance 2.0 Fast	ByteDance	$0.054	flat
Seedance 2.0	ByteDance	$0.067	per generation
Seedance 2.5	ByteDance	$0.140	per generation
Qwen3 Omni Flash	Alibaba Cloud	$0.150	per image
Hunyuan Turbos Vision Video	Tencent	$0.462	per image

Cheapest 3D (top 5 by list price)

Model	Provider	List price	Unit
Hunyuan 3D Motion	Tencent	$0.185	per generation
Hunyuan 3D Express	Tencent	$0.277	per generation
Tripo 3D P1	Tripo	$0.323	per generation
Tripo 3D 3.1	Tripo	$0.323	per generation
Hunyuan 3D 3.1	Tencent	$0.369	per generation

Cheapest Audio (top 5 by list price)

Model	Provider	List price	Unit
Qwen3 TTS Flash	Alibaba Cloud	$0.015	flat
MiniMax Speech 2.6 HD	MiniMax	$1.54	flat
Hunyuan ASR 3.0	Tencent (Hunyuan)	$1.54	flat
MiniMax Speech 02 HD	MiniMax	$1.54	flat
MiniMax Speech 02 Turbo	MiniMax	$1.54	per generation

Cheapest Embedding (top 5 by list price)

Model	Provider	List price	Unit
Kinfra VL Embedding 2B	Tencent (Kinfra)	$0.077	per image
Kinfra Text Embedding 0.6B	Tencent (Kinfra)	$0.077	flat
Text Embedding V4	Alibaba Cloud	$0.080	flat
Kinfra Text Embedding 4B	Tencent (Kinfra)	$0.092	flat
Kinfra VL Embedding 8B	Tencent (Kinfra)	$0.092	per image

Questions

What is the cheapest Chinese AI API?

The cheapest paid models start at $0.015 per unit, and 5 of the 111 models are free - including GLM-4.7-Flash for text and CogVideoX-Flash for video (5 generations a day, no card).

Cheapest is not always cheapest per finished result

A cheaper per-call model that needs more retries can cost more than a pricier one that lands first time. The cost tables include the retry multiplier for that reason.

Do I need a different key per model?

No. All of these sit behind one OpenAI-compatible endpoint and one API key.

Try the cheapest models free first

Five free models, 10 calls a day, no card. One key for all 111.

Get a free key Full price table →

Generated 2026-11-01 19:00 UTC from the machine-readable price feed. Prices belong to their respective providers; markup is 0% and checkable at transparency.