// alternatives · October 2026
Claude Haiku 5.5 alternatives
Cheaper models that come close, budget substitutes, and the cheapest step up — chosen on published LiveBench scores and live list price, never on our opinion. Every model here supports tool calling and image input, as Claude Haiku 5.5 does.
Nothing benchmarked beats Claude Haiku 5.5 on price at its quality level; the cheapest step up is DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 at $0.525 per 1M blended.
Claude Haiku 5.5: 69.8 overall on LiveBench, $0.200 per 1M blended tokens, about $74.00/mo for a RAG assistant.
Stronger options, cheapest first
Models that beat Claude Haiku 5.5 on LiveBench overall, ordered by what the upgrade costs.
| Model | Overall | vs Claude Haiku 5.5 | Blended / 1M | RAG assistant | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017deepseek 4.2 points higher overall, 162% more expensive. Head to head → | 74.0 | +4.2 | $0.525 | $194.40/mo | 1.0M |
| GPT-6.1 Terraopenai 7.9 points higher overall, 900% more expensive. Head to head → | 77.8 | +7.9 | $2.00 | $720.00/mo | 1.1M |
| Kimi K3.1 Promoonshotai 1.4 points higher overall, 1900% more expensive. Head to head → | 71.3 | +1.4 | $4.00 | $1,480/mo | 1.0M |
| Gemini 4 Argongoogle 9.5 points higher overall, 1900% more expensive. Head to head → | 79.3 | +9.5 | $4.00 | $1,440/mo | 1.0M |
| GPT-6.1 Solopenai 14.2 points higher overall, 1900% more expensive. Head to head → | 84.1 | +14.2 | $4.00 | $1,440/mo | 1.1M |
Claude Haiku 5.5 alternatives FAQ
Which model is better than Claude Haiku 5.5?
The cheapest model that scores higher overall on LiveBench is DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 — 4.2 points higher overall, 162% more expensive.
How alternatives are chosen
- Scores — LiveBench release 2026-10-25. Only models with a published run are suggested on quality; a missing model means “not evaluated”, not “worse”.
- Prices — live list prices from OpenRouter, blended 3:1 input:output. Monthly figures price a RAG assistant with the published cached-input rate where there is one.
- Same job — suggestions must support every capability Claude Haiku 5.5 has among tool calling and image input. Other listings of the same model (free or batch tiers) are variants, not alternatives, and are left out.
A few points on a public benchmark can hide large differences on your own tasks. Shortlist here, then decide with an eval — how to build one.