What's inside
China's AI labs now match US frontier models on most tasks — at 5–50× lower cost, often with open weights you can run for free. This cheat sheet shows the best Chinese pick for every job vs. its American rival, with real 2026 pricing.
- Coding & reasoning — DeepSeek, Kimi, Qwen vs. Claude & Gemini (~10× cheaper)
- Image — Seedream, Z-Image, Qwen-Image vs. GPT Image & Nano Banana
- Video — Kling & Seedance (now #1) vs. Google Veo — the one category China leads outright
- Voice & music — Fish Audio, MiniMax vs. ElevenLabs & Suno
- How to access them — 6 ways, from OpenRouter to free self-hosting
- An honest wins vs. value verdict per category, so nothing's overhyped
Grab the PDF for the full comparison, pricing, and access guide.