$0.150 in / $0.500 out
- Context: 1M
- Providers: 92
- Tool calling
- Structured output
- Reasoning
- Vision
- Open weights
Best AI models · 2026-11-12
Best AI Models for JSON Output and Structured Data
Models with explicit structured output / JSON mode + tool calling support.
How we picked these
- We give 50 points for explicit structured output / JSON mode support.
- Tool calling adds 20 points (often paired with JSON in real systems).
- Cheap models get a small bonus — JSON workloads tend to be high-volume.
Top 10 picks
$0.030 in / $0.120 out
- Context: 1M
- Providers: 72
- Tool calling
- Structured output
- Reasoning
- Vision
- Open weights
$0.660 in / $1.98 out
- Context: 1.05M
- Providers: 69
- Tool calling
- Structured output
- Reasoning
- Open weights
$0.150 in / $0.600 out
- Context: 1.05M
- Providers: 66
- Tool calling
- Structured output
- Reasoning
- Vision
- Open weights
$0.030 in / $0.120 out
- Context: 1.05M
- Providers: 60
- Tool calling
- Structured output
- Reasoning
- Vision
- Open weights
$0.045 in / $0.090 out
- Context: 1.05M
- Providers: 54
- Tool calling
- Structured output
- Reasoning
- Open weights
$0.001 in / $0.001 out
- Context: 1.05M
- Providers: 51
- Tool calling
- Structured output
- Reasoning
- Vision
- Open weights
$0.030 in / $0.150 out
- Context: 131K
- Providers: 51
- Tool calling
- Structured output
- Reasoning
- Open weights
$0.600 in / $1.90 out
- Context: 1.05M
- Providers: 43
- Tool calling
- Structured output
- Reasoning
- Open weights
$0.375 in / $2.00 out
- Context: 262K
- Providers: 41
- Tool calling
- Structured output
- Reasoning
- Vision
- Open weights
Recommended stack by tier
Same shortlist sliced four ways — pick the tier that matches your budget and constraints.
Budget
Alibaba (Qwen)$0.001 in / $0.001 out · 1.05M ctx
Lowest total per-1M-token cost in this list ($0.00).
Lowest-cost option that still meets the use case. Pick this when you have high volume or strict unit-economics.
Balanced
Z.AI / Zhipu$0.150 in / $0.500 out · 1M ctx
Median price ($0.65) — typically the safest default.
Good-enough quality at a mid-tier price. The default choice for most production apps.
Premium
DeepSeek$0.660 in / $1.98 out · 1.05M ctx
Highest-priced pick in the list ($2.64) — usually the flagship.
Highest-capability model in this list. Pick when accuracy or reasoning matters more than cost.
Open-weight
No fit in this list
Open weights — self-host on your own GPUs, fine-tune on private data, run offline. Pricing here reflects the cheapest API host.
Frequently asked questions
Which AI model is the best for structured / JSON output in 2026?
Right now we put GLM-5.3-Flash from Z.AI / Zhipu at the top, primarily because it explicitly supports JSON-schema-constrained decoding, not just 'reply in JSON'. Rankings are recomputed from live model metadata — see "How we picked these" above for the exact rule.
What is the cheapest option in this list?
Qwen3.8 27B (Alibaba (Qwen)) is the lowest-priced pick at $0.001 per 1M input tokens and $0.001 per 1M output tokens. Costs from other entries scale up from there.
How are these rankings generated?
Each pick comes from a programmatic rule defined in our use-case-rules config: a hard filter (e.g. tool calling required, context ≥ 100K) plus a numeric score combining capability, context window and price. We never hand-curate the order, but we do hand-curate the rule. Underlying model metadata is refreshed daily from a normalised canonical catalogue.
How often is this page updated?
The underlying model data is refreshed once per day, and the static page is rebuilt when the data changes. The 'Last updated' date below shows the most recent rebuild.
Explore more
Top picks · model details
- GLM-5.3-Flash$0.15 in / $0.50 out
- DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash$0.03 in / $0.12 out
- DeepSeek V4 Pro$0.66 in / $1.98 out
- DeepSeek V4 Flash$0.15 in / $0.60 out
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017$0.03 in / $0.12 out
Other best-of lists
Browse by capability
Vendors in this list
Last updated:
Prices in USD per 1M tokens. Unknown means the provider does not publish per-token pricing.
Pricing and capabilities are refreshed daily and reconciled against each provider's official documentation. Always verify critical production decisions with the provider directly.