FIELD GUIDE · PRICES VERIFIED OCT 10, 2026
Chinese AI models for business
Chinese AI models now handle most business workloads at a fraction of Western prices. In October 2026, DeepSeek V4.1-Flash lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens, against $2 and $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.5. Most Chinese flagships (DeepSeek V4, Qwen3.8, GLM-5.3, Kimi K3) ship open weights, so you can run them on your own private cloud.
By Lucas Page, The ShanghAI Guy · Updated October 10, 2026
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OUTPUT TOKENS · LIST PRICE
-88%
DeepSeek V4.1-Flash: $1.20 per million output tokens. Claude Sonnet 5.5: $10.00. Off-peak, DeepSeek halves again to $0.60.
Sources: DeepSeek API docs, Anthropic list prices, October 2026.
THE OCTOBER 2026 LINEUP
Which Chinese model, for which job
MODEL
WEIGHTS
$ IN / OUT PER 1M
BEST FOR
DeepSeek V4.1-Flash
Open
$0.30 / $1.20
High-volume text, extraction, agents. Half price off-peak.
DeepSeek V4-Pro
Open
$1.32 / $3.96
Harder reasoning, private on-prem deployment.
Qwen3.8-Max (Alibaba)
Open
$2.00 / $6.00
Coding, long-horizon agent work, 1M context.
Qwen3.8-Flash (Alibaba)
Open
$0.16 / $0.47
Cheapest capable model for volume and tool use.
GLM-5.3 (Zhipu)
Open
$1.40 / $4.40
Coding agents and security work.
MiniMax M3
Open
$0.33 / $1.32
Multimodal (text, image, video) at value pricing.
Kimi K3 (Moonshot)
Open
$3.00 / $15.00
Large repos, long agent loops. Not a budget pick.
Seed 2.0 Pro (ByteDance)
API only
$0.50 / $3.00
Managed enterprise API via BytePlus ModelArk.
Reference: Claude Sonnet 5.5
Closed
$2.00 / $10.00
The Western benchmark.
Official list prices per 1M tokens, standard tier, checked October 10, 2026. DeepSeek peak rates shown. Prices move fast: always confirm with the provider.
PROOF IN PRODUCTION
UnionPay runs DeepSeek-V4 fully air-gapped
China UnionPay deployed DeepSeek-V4 on-premise on Huawei Ascend hardware, cut off from the public internet. The setup passed national Level 4 financial security assessment and PCI DSS, and took real-time anti-fraud response from 30 seconds to milliseconds.
The full playbook, including the four-layer encryption setup, is in the case study.
Chinese model teardowns
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Start here: the essential reads
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Related guides: Open-source LLMs for business · AI inference cost · For CTOs · For CFOs · For CMOs
FAQ
What decision makers ask us
Are Chinese AI models good enough for Western businesses?
For most daily work, yes. Alibaba says Qwen3.8-27B matches Qwen3.7-Plus, a model ten times its size, and GLM-5.3 and Kimi K3 now compete with closed frontier models on coding benchmarks. Keep a premium model for your hardest reasoning and test on your own data before switching.
Is it safe to send company data to a Chinese AI model?
With open weights, you don't send anything. DeepSeek, Qwen and GLM run on your own servers or private cloud with zero data egress. China UnionPay runs DeepSeek-V4 fully air-gapped for real-time fraud detection.
Are all Chinese models cheaper than Claude or GPT?
No. Kimi K3 lists at $3 input and $15 output per million tokens, more than Claude Sonnet 5.5. The big savings come from DeepSeek V4.1-Flash, Qwen3.8-Flash and MiniMax M3, priced between $0.16 and $0.33 per million input tokens.
Which Chinese model should I start with?
DeepSeek V4.1-Flash for high-volume text, extraction and classification. Qwen3.8 for coding and multimodal work. ByteDance Seed 2.0 on BytePlus if you want a managed enterprise API instead of hosting weights yourself.
How often do these prices change?
Often. DeepSeek has cut V4 prices since launch and now charges half price off-peak. We re-check this table every month, and subscribers get the changes first.
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