Two-Week Test of Chinese AI Models Reveals Costs Far Below GPT-4o

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A software developer spent two weeks evaluating four Chinese AI model families — DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, and GLM — after encountering claims that some could match GPT-4o at a fraction of the cost. Pricing discovered during testing ranged from as low as $0.01 per million tokens for models like Qwen3-8B and GLM-4-9B, compared to significantly higher rates for mainstream Western alternatives. DeepSeek's V4 Flash model at $0.25 per million tokens emerged as the top pick for budget-conscious users, performing well on coding and general tasks. Qwen was noted for offering the widest range of model options, Kimi for strong reasoning performance, and GLM for superior Chinese-language capabilities. The findings highlight a competitive and largely overlooked AI landscape beyond the dominant players OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.

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