When is a reasoning model worth the extra cost?

When the problem has steps: math, planning, debugging, anything where a wrong intermediate step sinks the answer. For lookups and drafting, a standard model is faster and cheaper.

How do I compare reasoners before choosing?

Run the same problem across two or three in parallel tabs. Reasoning traces make the comparison unusually legible: you can see where each one's logic held or slipped.

All roundups

Best of

Models that show their work.

Reasoning picks from the math and logic lanes: AIME, MATH-500, and HLE among the named benchmarks, with live prices.

Last reviewed July 16, 2026

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Reasoning models spend extra compute thinking before they answer, and on multi-step problems the difference is measurable. These picks follow the math and reasoning lanes of the live rankings; the trade is latency and price, so the list spans frontier reasoners and cheap ones you can afford to run on everything.

How we pickedPicks follow the math and reasoning lanes of the live rankings (AIME, MATH-500, GPQA, and HLE among the named benchmarks). Per-token prices and context render live from the registry; reasoning models also bill their thinking tokens, which the in-app cost estimate shows before you send.

The picks

1Qwen 3 Max ThinkingThe open-weight reasoning flagship.

$0.78 in / $3.90 out per M tokens · 262K context

Front-of-pack on the math lanes with visible reasoning traces, at open-weight pricing that makes frontier-grade reasoning routine.

Best for: Math, proofs, and multi-step analysis at volume.

2DeepSeek V4 ProThe price-performance reasoner.

$0.43 in / $0.87 out per M tokens · 1.0M context

The line that made reasoning cheap keeps doing it: strong benchmark standing at prices that change what you can afford to ask.

Best for: Everyday reasoning without budget anxiety.

3MiniMax M3The long-context reasoner.

$0.3 in / $1.20 out per M tokens · 524K context

Combines extended reasoning with a very large context window, for problems where the difficulty is the size of the input.

Best for: Reasoning over long documents and codebases.

4GLM-5.2The balanced expert.

$1.40 in / $4.40 out per M tokens · 262K context

A reasoner that stays strong outside pure math, holding up on knowledge and coding lanes too; a good single default for hard questions.

Best for: Mixed hard problems in one model.

Frequently asked

Run them in one workspace

Multi-Model Chat

GPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Llama: pick mid-conversation, cheapest-first.

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Keep comparing

The models that ship working code.Models that cite what survives.Frontier answers at commodity prices.The models that get the number right.

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