I compared 4 Chinese AI models against GPT-4o and Claude — the price gap is absurd (2026)

While GPT-5.5 and Claude Opus 4.7 dominate the headlines, Chinese AI labs have been shipping cutting-edge models at a fraction of the price. DeepSeek is now on V4, Kimi on K2.6, Qwen on 3.6, GLM on 5.1 — and the pricing gap remains enormous. Here's what builders need to know. The contenders Model Company Context Open Source DeepSeek V4 DeepSeek 1M Yes Kimi K2.6 Moonshot AI 1M+ No Qwen 3.6 Alibaba 128K Partial GLM-5.1 Zhipu AI 128K Yes DeepSeek V4 — The price-performance leader DeepSeek V4 comes