Model Tier Quiz
Seven questions to pick budget, workhorse, or flagship LLM tier — with honest advice to start cheap.
It helps you choose how powerful and expensive your AI model needs to be.
What this tool does
Many tasks do not need the most expensive model. Answer a few questions about difficulty, volume, latency, and failure cost. The result points you toward a budget, workhorse, or flagship tier.
- Pick a starting model tier for a new feature
- Avoid paying flagship prices for routine work
- Recognize tasks where better reasoning is worth the extra cost
Please answer every question before seeing your tier.
Your tier
Example models (mid-2026 snapshot)Honest advice
Model tiers are a pricing ladder, not a personality test. Budget models handle bulk work; workhorses run most production apps; flagships are for when errors are expensive or the task needs the best reasoning available.
Scoring is rule-based — your answers add points to each tier. There is no AI behind this quiz. Example models are a static mid-2026 snapshot; check current pricing before you commit.
The real answer is almost always: start cheap, measure with evals on your actual prompts, and upgrade one tier when cheap models fail — not when marketing says you need the frontier model.