Best Value LLM for Knowledge in 2026 — Cost-Adjusted Rankings

Knowledge benchmarks test factual accuracy, expert-level science, and professional comprehension. This ranking divides each model's weighted knowledge score (GPQA, SuperGPQA, MMLU-Pro, HLE, FrontierScience, SimpleQA) by output token price. For RAG pipelines, research assistants, and Q&A systems where accurate knowledge retrieval matters but API costs add up, the value leaders here offer the best accuracy per dollar.

According to BenchLM.ai, Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite leads this ranking with a score of 116.08, followed by Gemini 2.5 Flash (80.55) and DeepSeek Coder 2.0 (55.55). There is a significant gap between the leading models and the rest of the field.

The best open-weight option is DeepSeek Coder 2.0 (ranked #3 with a score of 55.55). Open-weight models are highly competitive in this category — self-hosting is a viable alternative to proprietary APIs.

This ranking is based on weighted averages across the scoring benchmarks in knowledge tracked by BenchLM.ai. For detailed model profiles, click any model name below. To compare two specific models head-to-head, use the "vs #" links.

Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite
GoogleProprietary1M

116.08

Score/$

Score: 46.4 · $0.4/1M

Gemini 2.5 Flash
GoogleProprietary1M

80.55

Score/$

Score: 48.3 · $0.6/1M

DeepSeek Coder 2.0
DeepSeekOpen Weight128K

55.55

Score/$

Score: 61.1 · $1.1/1M

4
DeepSeek V3
DeepSeekOpen Weight128K

52.28

Score/$

Score: 57.5 · $1.1/1M

5
Kimi K2.5
Moonshot AIOpen Weight128K

23.78

Score/$

Score: 66.6 · $2.8/1M

6
DeepSeek-R1
DeepSeekOpen Weight128K

21.48

Score/$

Score: 47 · $2.19/1M

7
Gemini 3 Flash
GoogleProprietary1M

17.98

Score/$

Score: 54 · $3/1M

8
Gemini 3.1 Pro
GoogleProprietary1M

16.13

Score/$

Score: 80.7 · $5/1M

9
Claude Haiku 4.5
AnthropicProprietary200K

13.6

Score/$

Score: 54.4 · $4/1M

10
Gemini 2.5 Pro
GoogleProprietary1M

12.77

Score/$

Score: 63.9 · $5/1M

11
GPT-5.1
OpenAIProprietary200K

12.37

Score/$

Score: 74.2 · $6/1M

12
GPT-5.2
OpenAIProprietary400K

10.03

Score/$

Score: 80.2 · $8/1M

13
GPT-5.2-Codex
OpenAIProprietary400K

9.31

Score/$

Score: 74.5 · $8/1M

14
GPT-5.1-Codex-Max
OpenAIProprietary400K

9.3

Score/$

Score: 74.4 · $8/1M

15
GPT-5.3 Codex
OpenAIProprietary400K

8.15

Score/$

Score: 81.5 · $10/1M

16
Mistral Large 3
MistralProprietary128K

8.01

Score/$

Score: 48.1 · $6/1M

17
GPT-5.4
OpenAIProprietary1.05M

5.54

Score/$

Score: 83.1 · $15/1M

18
Grok 4.1
xAIProprietary1M

5.38

Score/$

Score: 80.8 · $15/1M

19
Claude Sonnet 4.5
AnthropicProprietary200K

4.75

Score/$

Score: 71.2 · $15/1M

20
GPT-4o
OpenAIProprietary128K

4.36

Score/$

Score: 43.6 · $10/1M

21
o3
OpenAIProprietary200K

1.42

Score/$

Score: 57 · $40/1M

22
Claude Opus 4.6
AnthropicProprietary1M

1.04

Score/$

Score: 77.8 · $75/1M

23
GPT-5.4 Pro
OpenAIProprietary1.05M

0.47

Score/$

Score: 84.9 · $180/1M

Key Takeaways

  • The best value model is Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite by Google with a Score/$ ratio of 116.08 (score: 46.4, output: $0.4/1M tokens).
  • The best open-weight model in this ranking is DeepSeek Coder 2.0 at position #3.
  • 23 models are included in this ranking.
Last updated: April 3, 2026

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