LLM Models and APIs
LLM Models, APIs & Capabilities
Model Selection Decision Tree
What is the primary constraint?
|
+-- COST --> Is quality critical?
| +-- No --> Gemini 2.5 Flash ($0.30/$2.50) or GPT-4.1 nano ($0.10/$0.40)
| +-- Yes --> GPT-4.1 mini ($0.40/$1.60)
|
+-- QUALITY --> What domain?
| +-- Reasoning/math --> o3 or o4-mini
| +-- Coding --> Sonnet 4.6 (79.6% SWE-bench) or Opus 4.7
| +-- Long documents --> Gemini 2.5 Pro (1M) or Claude (1M)
|
+-- SPEED --> Haiku 4.5 / Gemini Flash / GPT-4o-mini
|
+-- CONTEXT --> Llama 4 Scout (10M) > GPT-4.1 / Claude / Gemini (1M)
|
+-- PRIVACY --> Local: DeepSeek V4 (MIT) or Qwen 3.5 (Apache 2.0) via Ollama/vLLM
Key Pricing (per MTok, May 2026)
| Model |
Input |
Output |
Context |
| Claude Opus 4.7 |
$5.00 |
$25.00 |
1M |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
$3.00 |
$15.00 |
1M |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 |
$1.00 |
$5.00 |
200K |
| GPT-4.1 |
$2.00 |
$8.00 |
1M |
| GPT-4.1 mini |
$0.40 |
$1.60 |
1M |
| GPT-4.1 nano |
$0.10 |
$0.40 |
1M |
| o4-mini |
$1.10 |
$4.40 |
200K |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash |
$0.30 |
$2.50 |
1M |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro |
Self-host |
Self-host |
1M |
The 2–3 Model Production Pattern
- Fast/cheap tier (80–95% of requests): Gemini Flash, GPT-4.1 mini, Haiku
- Strong tier (5–15% of requests): Sonnet 4.6, GPT-4.1
- Deep reasoning tier (1–5% of requests): Opus 4.7, o3
Prompt Caching Comparison
| Provider |
Cache hit discount |
Write cost |
TTL |
| Anthropic |
90% (0.1x) |
1.25x (5 min) |
5 min or 1 hr |
| OpenAI |
50% (0.5x) |
Free |
Auto |
| Google |
~75% |
Varies |
Configurable |