DeepSeek
DeepSeek
✓ 17 Aug 2026
Free chat with open-weight reasoning models, and the cheapest serious API anywhere — though DeepSeek announced a substantial price rise in August 2026.
AI tools
Every product in the index, with what each plan costs and when it was last verified.
Every price in this index was checked against its source 6 days ago,
on 17 Aug 2026. Figures are USD, monthly billing, individual plans.
Where annual billing is cheaper, the annual rate is shown beside the plan. Credit-metered
products are marked, because on those the sticker price is not what you end up paying.
10 products
editorially ranked — placement is never sold
Doubao
ByteDance
✓ 17 Aug 2026
China's most-used consumer assistant, with aggressive metered pricing via Volcano Engine.
Ernie Bot
Baidu
✓ 17 Aug 2026
Baidu's assistant, tied into its search and maps ecosystem.
Kimi
Moonshot AI
✓ 17 Aug 2026
Million-token context and strong agentic browsing, with tiers named after tempo markings.
MiniMax
MiniMax
✓ 17 Aug 2026
Text, voice and video models under one roof, with open-weight text releases and a pay-as-you-go developer platform.
Qwen Chat
Alibaba
✓ 17 Aug 2026
The most widely forked open-weight family.
Yuanbao
Tencent
✓ 17 Aug 2026
Hunyuan models wrapped in a WeChat-native assistant.
Z.ai GLM
Zhipu AI
✓ 17 Aug 2026
GLM sold as a coding plan that heavily undercuts Western agents.
Hailuo
MiniMax
✓ 17 Aug 2026
Cinematic camera moves and character reference, cheap per generation.
Kling
Kuaishou
✓ 17 Aug 2026
Strong physics and human motion, native 4K since April 2026, and the most generous free tier in the category at 66 credits a day.