// alternatives · October 2026
o3 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 o3 does.
LiveBench hasn't published a run for o3. The strongest benchmarked model at a similar or lower price is GPT-6.1 Sol, scoring 84.1 overall.
o3: no published LiveBench run, $3.50 per 1M blended tokens, about $1,480/mo for a RAG assistant.
Benchmarked models at or below its price
o3 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 o3 | Blended / 1M | RAG assistant | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-6.1 Solopenai 14% more expensive. Head to head → | 84.1 | — | $4.00 | $1,440/mo | 1.1M |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5anthropic 14% more expensive. Head to head → | 80.0 | — | $4.00 | $1,440/mo | 1M |
| Gemini 4 Argongoogle 14% more expensive. Head to head → | 79.3 | — | $4.00 | $1,440/mo | 1.0M |
| GPT-6.1 Terraopenai 43% cheaper. Head to head → | 77.8 | — | $2.00−43% | $720.00/mo | 1.1M |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017deepseek 85% cheaper. Head to head → | 74.0 | — | $0.525−85% | $194.40/mo | 1.0M |
| Kimi K3.1 Promoonshotai 14% more expensive. Head to head → | 71.3 | — | $4.00 | $1,480/mo | 1.0M |
o3 alternatives FAQ
What is the best alternative to o3?
GPT-6.1 Sol. 14% more expensive. Every suggestion supports tool calling and image input, like o3.
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 o3 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.