{"slug": "wheredakey-ai-model-comparison", "title": "Wheredakey AI model comparison", "summary": "A developer benchmarked roughly 30 AI model routes on a reverse-engineering task, logging total tokens, output tokens and cost per run. Xiaomi MiMo v2.6 Flash solved the task for about $0.005, while Claude Opus 5.5 was rated highest on intelligence and token efficiency at $0.24 and Gemini Flash refused the task outright. The most expensive runs, including Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Kimi K3's direct API, cost up to $0.72, and Meta Muse Glimmer 30B was cancelled unsolved.", "body_md": "|  | ``` | \n|  | +----------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+ | \n|  | \\| Model / route \\| Experience / outcome \\| Total tokens \\| Output tokens \\| Cost \\| | \n|  | +----------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+ | \n|  | \\| Xiaomi MiMo v2.6 Flash \\| Incredibly fast and intelligent; solved. \\| 225,291 \\| 3,281 \\| $0.005 (0.5c) \\| | \n|  | \\| GLM 5.3 Flash / OpenRouter \\| Least intelligent group but cheapest; solved. \\| 340,006 \\| 11,205 \\| $0.01 \\| | \n|  | \\| ChatGPT Luna Latest \\| Very fast, concise, token-efficient, intelligent, and cheap; solved. \\| 401,837 \\| 5,119 \\| $0.01 \\| | \n|  | \\| Qwen 3.8 Flash \\| Initially confused and failed, then eventually solved. \\| ~418,000 \\| 16,676 \\| $0.02 \\| | \n|  | \\| Qwen 3.8 27B \\| Fast; one wrong answer, then quickly self-corrected. \\| ~774,784 \\| 12,658 \\| $0.02 \\| | \n|  | \\| DeepSeek Flash / direct API \\| Fast, cheap, and accurate; solved. \\| 369,334 \\| 9,089 \\| $0.03 \\| | \n|  | \\| DeepSeek Flash / OpenRouter \\| Fast and intelligent; solved in 76 seconds. \\| 371,689 \\| 13,888 \\| $0.03 \\| | \n|  | \\| Claude Haiku 5.5 \\| Fast and surprisingly intelligent, but overly thorough and token-heavy. \\| 662,346 \\| 26,244 \\| $0.03 \\| | \n|  | \\| Thinking Machines Inkling \\| Low intelligence; good speed and relatively token-efficient; may loop. \\| N/A \\| N/A \\| $0.03 \\| | \n|  | \\| Xiaomi MiMo v2.6 Pro \\| Overthought the task and wandered into tangents. \\| ~420,644 \\| 13,638 \\| $0.05 \\| | \n|  | \\| GLM 5.3 / OpenRouter \\| Cheap and intelligent but behind DeepSeek; solved in about 2m 20s. \\| ~702,473* \\| 11,879 \\| $0.08 \\| | \n|  | \\| GPT Sol Latest (Sol 6.1) \\| Slow, but highly intelligent and extremely token-efficient; solved in ~89s. \\| 294,957 \\| 1,406 \\| $0.15 \\| | \n|  | \\| MiniMax M3 \\| Least intelligent comparison; many wrong turns and repeated small mistakes. \\| 4,546,552* \\| 116,804 \\| $0.20 \\| | \n|  | \\| GPT Terra Latest \\| Very fast, very smart, and token-efficient; solved. \\| 229,888 \\| 2,342 \\| $0.20 \\| | \n|  | \\| Mistral Large 4.0 \\| Medium speed; small mistakes but reached the solution. \\| 303,687 \\| 4,041 \\| $0.21 \\| | \n|  | \\| Kimi K2.7 Code \\| Less intelligent, slow, expensive; not worth using. \\| 100,740 \\| 8,938 \\| $0.22 \\| | \n|  | \\| Claude Opus 5.5 \\| Highest intelligence and token efficiency; pretty fast; cheaper than Sonnet. \\| 312,837 \\| 1,862 \\| $0.24 \\| | \n|  | \\| Qwen 3.8 Max 0902 \\| Fast and intelligent, better than Kimi K3, but token-hungry. \\| 1,305,241 \\| 26,390 \\| $0.25 \\| | \n|  | \\| Kimi K3 / OpenRouter \\| Faster and cheaper than direct K3, but still very expensive. \\| 750,064 \\| 5,922 \\| ~$0.32 \\| | \n|  | \\| Meta Muse Spark Open \\| Intelligent and medium speed, but among the more expensive runs. \\| 872,850 \\| 10,284 \\| $0.35 \\| | \n|  | \\| Gemini 4 Argon \\| Extremely fast and intelligent; strong value for capability. \\| 384,046 \\| 2,870 \\| $0.35 \\| | \n|  | \\| Grok 4.7 \\| Very fast and intelligent, but expensive. \\| 655,648 \\| 4,217 \\| $0.46 \\| | \n|  | \\| Meta Muse Glimmer 30B \\| Fast but low intelligence and token-inefficient; cancelled unsolved. \\| N/A \\| N/A \\| ~$0.50 wasted \\| | \n|  | \\| Claude Sonnet 5.5 \\| Smart and fast but very token-inefficient and expensive. \\| 1,243,285* \\| 20,381 \\| $0.57 \\| | \n|  | \\| Kimi K3 / direct API \\| Intelligent but not notable; extremely slow and far too expensive. \\| 205,710 \\| 3,215 \\| $0.72 \\| | \n|  | \\| ChatGPT Astra Latest \\| Medium speed, token-efficient, highly intelligent; cost similar to Fable. \\| 278,603 \\| 1,536 \\| $0.83 \\| | \n|  | \\| Claude Fable 5.1 \\| OK speed, very expensive, medium token efficiency; solved in ~53s. \\| 397,806* \\| 2,857 \\| $0.85 \\| | \n|  | \\| Gemini Flash \\| Refused the reverse-engineering task. \\| N/A \\| N/A \\| Not reported \\| | \n|  | \\| Thinking Machines Inkling Small \\| Got stuck immediately and was terminated. \\| N/A \\| N/A \\| Not reported \\| | \n|  | +----------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+ | \n|  | ``` |", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/wheredakey-ai-model-comparison", "canonical_source": "https://gist.github.com/markoglasgow/8812c19b6fbffed30b2661b127d9b010", "published_at": "2026-10-24 11:56:30+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-24 20:42:35.743514+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["large-language-models", "ai-tools", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["Xiaomi", "GLM", "OpenRouter", "ChatGPT", "Qwen", "DeepSeek", "Claude", "Gemini"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/wheredakey-ai-model-comparison", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/wheredakey-ai-model-comparison.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/wheredakey-ai-model-comparison.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/wheredakey-ai-model-comparison.jsonld"}}