01.AI Yi (零一万物)
Listed at https://platform.lingyiwanwu.com
Overall Rank #16 ⭐ Consider
✅ Direct access in China (Chinese company, supports domestic registration + Alipay/WeChat Pay) | 🇨🇳 China Direct
💰 Token Pricing
| Type | Price | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Input | ¥0.99/1M total tokens（Yi-Lightning，input+output 合并计费） | per million tokens |
| Output | ¥0.99/1M total tokens（合并计费，不区分 input/output） | per million tokens |
💡 Free Credits: Free rate limit tier on registration (limited RPM/TPM), no free initial credits
🤖 Supported Models (2)
Yi-Lightning (智能路由 → DeepSeek-V3/Qwen3-30B-A3B/Yi-Lightning)Yi-Vision-v2 (视觉理解，路由 → Qwen2.5-VL-72B/Yi-Vision-V2)
✨ Pros
- ✓Founded by Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, globally recognized AI lab
- ✓Yi-Lightning at ¥0.99/1M tokens — extremely competitive pricing
- ✓Smart routing: auto-selects DeepSeek-V3 / Qwen3.5 / Yi-Lightning per request
- ✓100% OpenAI-compatible API /v1/chat/completions, zero SDK migration
- ✓Strong Chinese model ecosystem with balanced bilingual performance
- ✓Open-source model series (Yi-1.5 / Yi-VL / Yi-Coder) with broad community impact
⚠️ Cons
- ×Limited API model selection: only 2 models (Yi-Lightning + Yi-Vision-v2), no direct Llama/Qwen access
- ×Combined billing is opaque — cannot separately account for input vs output costs
- ×English documentation and community support weaker than international vendors
- ×No free initial credits — must recharge to use
- ×Smart routing model selection is non-deterministic (users cannot pin to DeepSeek-V3)
🎯 Best For
Cost-sensitive inference workloads in China; budget-conscious bilingual chat; teams migrating from OpenAI to low-cost domestic alternatives; smart-routing scenarios (no fixed model needed)