// alternatives · October 2026
Nano Banana 2.1 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 Nano Banana 2.1 does.
LiveBench hasn't published a run for Nano Banana 2.1. The strongest benchmarked model at a similar or lower price is GPT-6.1 Terra, scoring 77.8 overall.
Nano Banana 2.1: no published LiveBench run, $3.00 per 1M blended tokens, about $1,650/mo for a RAG assistant.
Benchmarked models at or below its price
Nano Banana 2.1 has no published LiveBench run, so these are the highest-scoring benchmarked models priced no more than 25% above it — a known quantity to test against.
| Model | Overall | vs Nano Banana 2.1 | Blended / 1M | RAG assistant | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-6.1 Terraopenai 33% cheaper. Head to head → | 77.8 | — | $2.00−33% | $720.00/mo | 1.1M |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017deepseek 83% cheaper. Head to head → | 74.0 | — | $0.525−83% | $194.40/mo | 1.0M |
| SpaceXAI: Grok 4.7x-ai the same list price. Head to head → | 70.1 | — | $3.00 | $1,360/mo | 500K |
| Claude Haiku 5.5anthropic 93% cheaper. Head to head → | 69.8 | — | $0.200−93% | $74.00/mo | 1M |
| MiMo-V2.6-Proxiaomi 82% cheaper. Head to head → | 68.5 | — | $0.544−82% | $227.64/mo | 1.1M |
| SpaceXAI: Grok 4.6x-ai the same list price. Head to head → | 67.8 | — | $3.00 | $1,360/mo | 500K |
Nano Banana 2.1 alternatives FAQ
What is the best alternative to Nano Banana 2.1?
GPT-6.1 Terra. 33% cheaper. Every suggestion supports tool calling and image input, like Nano Banana 2.1.
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 Nano Banana 2.1 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.