Cheapest AI Coding Tools for Students (2026)
Students need affordable AI coding help for homework, projects, and learning. These models cost pennies per usage session.
Quick Recommendations
Our top 3 picks for this use case, ranked by value.
🏆 Top Pick
GLM-4-Flash
Zhipu AI's ultra-cheap model. Near-free pricing for high-volume Chinese and English text tasks.
View Full Pricing →#2
Amazon Nova Micro
Amazon's most cost-effective model. Optimized for speed and low-cost text generation tasks.
View Full Pricing →#3
Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite
The most affordable Gemini model. Ultra-low cost for high-volume, simple coding and text tasks.
View Full Pricing →Why These Models?
As a student, you shouldn't spend much on AI coding tools. The models below are all under $1.10 per million input tokens, meaning a typical homework session (50K-100K tokens) costs less than $0.10.
The absolute cheapest options are Gemini 1.5 Flash ($0.075/M), Gemini 2.0 Flash ($0.10/M), and Mistral Small 3 ($0.10/M). For students who need reasoning help with algorithms or math, o3-mini and o4-mini ($1.10/M) are the cheapest reasoning-capable models.
Complete Rankings & Pricing
All 75 models ranked for cheapest ai coding tools for students. Costs calculated at 30% cache hit rate.
| Rank | Model | Provider | Small Project | Medium Project | Large Project | Code Review | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | GLM-4-Flash | Zhipu AI | <$0.01 | $0.01 | $0.03 | <$0.01 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #2 | Amazon Nova Micro | Amazon | <$0.01 | $0.04 | $0.20 | <$0.01 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #3 | Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite | <$0.01 | $0.04 | $0.22 | $0.01 | vs GLM-4-Flash | |
| #4 | MiniMax Text 01 | MiniMax | <$0.01 | $0.06 | $0.29 | $0.01 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #5 | Stable Code 3B | Stability AI | <$0.01 | $0.06 | $0.29 | $0.01 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #6 | Llama 3.1 8B | Meta | <$0.01 | $0.04 | $0.19 | $0.01 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #7 | Phi-3 Mini | Microsoft | <$0.01 | $0.04 | $0.19 | $0.01 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #8 | Amazon Nova Lite | Amazon | <$0.01 | $0.07 | $0.34 | $0.02 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #9 | Gemini 1.5 Flash | $0.01 | $0.09 | $0.43 | $0.02 | vs GLM-4-Flash | |
| #10 | Gemini 2.0 Flash Lite | $0.01 | $0.09 | $0.43 | $0.02 | vs GLM-4-Flash | |
| #11 | Qwen Turbo | Qwen | $0.01 | $0.08 | $0.38 | $0.02 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #12 | Gemini 2.0 Flash | $0.02 | $0.12 | $0.58 | $0.03 | vs GLM-4-Flash | |
| #13 | Mistral Small 3 | Mistral | $0.01 | $0.10 | $0.47 | $0.02 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #14 | Microsoft Phi-4 | Microsoft | $0.01 | $0.10 | $0.47 | $0.02 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #15 | Gemma 3 27B | $0.02 | $0.12 | $0.58 | $0.03 | vs GLM-4-Flash | |
| #16 | Stable LM 2 | Stability AI | $0.02 | $0.12 | $0.58 | $0.03 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #17 | GPT-4.1 Nano | OpenAI | $0.02 | $0.12 | $0.58 | $0.03 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #18 | Mistral Small 3 | Mistral | $0.01 | $0.10 | $0.47 | $0.02 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #19 | Phi-3 Medium | Microsoft | $0.01 | $0.10 | $0.47 | $0.02 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #20 | Phi-4 Mini | Microsoft | $0.01 | $0.10 | $0.47 | $0.02 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #21 | GLM-4-Air | Zhipu AI | <$0.01 | $0.08 | $0.39 | $0.03 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #22 | DeepSeek V3 | DeepSeek | $0.01 | $0.11 | $0.53 | $0.03 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #23 | DeepSeek R1 | DeepSeek | $0.02 | $0.16 | $0.80 | $0.04 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #24 | GPT-4o mini | OpenAI | $0.02 | $0.18 | $0.92 | $0.05 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #25 | Gemini 2.5 Flash | $0.02 | $0.17 | $0.86 | $0.04 | vs GLM-4-Flash | |
| #26 | Mistral Nemo | Mistral | <$0.01 | $0.08 | $0.41 | $0.03 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #27 | Qwen 3 Turbo | Qwen | $0.02 | $0.17 | $0.86 | $0.04 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #28 | DeepSeek Jiuge | DeepSeek | $0.02 | $0.17 | $0.86 | $0.04 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #29 | Cohere Command R | Cohere | $0.02 | $0.17 | $0.86 | $0.04 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #30 | Yi-Lightning | 01.ai | $0.02 | $0.17 | $0.86 | $0.04 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #31 | MiniMax-M1 | MiniMax | $0.02 | $0.17 | $0.86 | $0.04 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #32 | Gemini 2.5 Flash | $0.02 | $0.17 | $0.86 | $0.04 | vs GLM-4-Flash | |
| #33 | Pixtral 12B | Mistral | <$0.01 | $0.08 | $0.41 | $0.03 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #34 | Reka Flash | Reka | $0.03 | $0.23 | $1.15 | $0.06 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #35 | Groq Gemma 2 9B | Groq | $0.01 | $0.11 | $0.55 | $0.04 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #36 | Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B | Qwen | $0.02 | $0.15 | $0.75 | $0.04 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #37 | Llama 3.1 70B | Meta | $0.02 | $0.15 | $0.75 | $0.04 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #38 | Llama 4 Scout | Meta | $0.03 | $0.23 | $1.15 | $0.06 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #39 | Groq Mixtral 8x7B | Groq | $0.02 | $0.13 | $0.66 | $0.05 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #40 | Claude 3 Haiku | Anthropic | $0.05 | $0.34 | $1.69 | $0.07 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #41 | Qwen Coder Turbo | Qwen | $0.05 | $0.34 | $1.69 | $0.07 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #42 | Llama 3.3 70B | Meta | $0.04 | $0.29 | $1.44 | $0.07 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #43 | DeepSeek Chat V3 | DeepSeek | $0.04 | $0.31 | $1.57 | $0.07 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #44 | DeepSeek Coder V2 | DeepSeek | $0.04 | $0.31 | $1.57 | $0.07 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #45 | DeepSeek Coder V3 | DeepSeek | $0.04 | $0.31 | $1.57 | $0.07 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #46 | DeepSeek V3.2 | DeepSeek | $0.05 | $0.34 | $1.73 | $0.08 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #47 | Grok 3 Mini | xAI | $0.03 | $0.21 | $1.02 | $0.07 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #48 | Codestral | Mistral | $0.04 | $0.29 | $1.43 | $0.07 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #49 | Qwen Coder Turbo V2 | Qwen | $0.05 | $0.34 | $1.73 | $0.08 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #50 | Qwen Plus | Qwen | $0.05 | $0.38 | $1.90 | $0.10 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #51 | Mistral Medium | Mistral | $0.07 | $0.54 | $2.70 | $0.12 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #52 | GPT-4.1 mini | OpenAI | $0.06 | $0.46 | $2.30 | $0.11 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #53 | Qwen 2.5 72B | Qwen | $0.04 | $0.30 | $1.50 | $0.09 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #54 | Llama 4 Maverick | Meta | $0.06 | $0.46 | $2.30 | $0.11 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #55 | Reka Edge | Reka | $0.04 | $0.34 | $1.70 | $0.10 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #56 | GPT-3.5 Turbo | OpenAI | $0.06 | $0.48 | $2.38 | $0.13 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #57 | Qwen 3 Coder | Qwen | $0.08 | $0.57 | $2.88 | $0.14 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #58 | QVQ 72B Preview | Qwen | $0.06 | $0.48 | $2.38 | $0.13 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #59 | DeepSeek Reasoner (R1) | DeepSeek | $0.08 | $0.63 | $3.15 | $0.15 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #60 | Groq Llama 3.3 70B | Groq | $0.04 | $0.36 | $1.82 | $0.12 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #61 | GLM-4-Plus | Zhipu AI | $0.05 | $0.38 | $1.92 | $0.14 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #62 | Databricks DBRX Instruct | Databricks | $0.09 | $0.71 | $3.56 | $0.19 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #63 | Claude 3.5 Haiku | Anthropic | $0.16 | $1.24 | $6.21 | $0.32 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #64 | Qwen Coder Plus | Qwen | $0.15 | $1.08 | $5.40 | $0.24 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #65 | Claude 4 Haiku | Anthropic | $0.16 | $1.24 | $6.21 | $0.32 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #66 | Amazon Nova Pro | Amazon | $0.12 | $0.92 | $4.60 | $0.22 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #67 | Together Mistral Small 3 | Together AI | $0.05 | $0.44 | $2.20 | $0.16 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #68 | Together Llama 3.3 70B | Together AI | $0.06 | $0.48 | $2.42 | $0.18 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #69 | Claude Sonnet 4 Lite | Anthropic | $0.21 | $1.55 | $7.76 | $0.40 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #70 | Perplexity Sonar | Perplexity | $0.07 | $0.55 | $2.75 | $0.20 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #71 | Reka Core | Reka | $0.11 | $0.85 | $4.25 | $0.24 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #72 | OpenAI o1-mini | OpenAI | $0.17 | $1.27 | $6.33 | $0.30 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #73 | OpenAI o3-mini | OpenAI | $0.17 | $1.27 | $6.33 | $0.30 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #74 | OpenAI o4-mini | OpenAI | $0.17 | $1.27 | $6.33 | $0.30 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
| #75 | O3 Mini | OpenAI | $0.17 | $1.27 | $6.33 | $0.30 | vs GLM-4-Flash |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a free AI coding tool for students?
GitHub Copilot is free for verified students. Claude also offers free access through claude.ai. For API usage, the cheapest models cost fractions of a cent per session.
Which AI model helps with computer science homework?
o3-mini is the best budget reasoning model for CS homework. It handles algorithms, data structures, and programming problems effectively.