Code review for pull requests: what it costs and which AI to use
An automated first-pass review on every pull request: bugs, risks and style. Engineering teams that want a reviewer on every change without waiting for a person.
The short answer
At 600 pull requests a month, we estimate $0.840 on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (the cheapest model that cleared our quality bar), $6.06 on GLM 5.2, and $67.79 on GPT-5.5. The flagship costs 11x the middle pick. Judged on code-fix and reasoning tasks: a missed bug and a false alarm both waste a reviewer's time.
Simulate your code review for pull requests
Pick a job, set how much of it you do, and see what every model would cost. Defaults are typical, not yours. Change them.
Prompt, history, documents
What the model writes
Advanced: caching, reasoning, retries, discounts
Share that can use cached-input prices where a model offers them
1 = none. 2 = hidden thinking doubles billed output
Extra calls on top of the base count
Batch jobs or committed spend. Check your provider; we assume none by default
Lowest benchmark score a model can have and still be picked. Higher is stricter.
Limit to certain providers
Untick any provider you cannot use, for data-residency, contract or policy reasons. Picks are recalculated.
600 pull requests a month, three ways to pay
Every model here cleared a score of 9.4 out of 10 on our code fix, reasoning benchmark tasks, ran without errors and fits a 64K-token window. 32 of 386 priced models qualify.
Cheapest model that clears the bar.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
- Per pull request
- $0.0014
- Benchmark
- 10.00 / 10 · 6 prompts
- Context
- 1.05M tokens
Priced near the middle of the models that clear the bar; best score there.
GLM 5.2
- Per pull request
- $0.010
- Benchmark
- 10.00 / 10 · 6 prompts
- Context
- 1.05M tokens
What many people reach for first.
GPT-5.5
- Per pull request
- $0.113
- Benchmark
- 10.00 / 10 · 6 prompts
- Context
- 1.05M tokens
Choosing GPT-5.5 over GLM 5.2 costs $61.73 more a month, $741 a year (11x the price).
Both scored 10.00 out of 10 on this kind of work. The extra money buys safety margin our benchmark cannot measure: it is 24 short prompts, and most passing models score near the top. If a wrong answer is costly for you, that margin can be worth it. Test on your own data before you decide.
If it grows
Pay-per-use cost scales in a straight line. Monthly cost at 1x, 3x, 10x and 100x today's volume.
| Model | 1x · 600 | 3x · 1,800 | 10x · 6,000 | 100x · 60K |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | $0.840 | $2.52 | $8.40 | $84.02 |
| GLM 5.2 | $6.06 | $18.17 | $60.56 | $606 |
| GPT-5.5 | $67.79 | $203 | $678 | $6,779 |
What a budget buys
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash71Kpull requests a month, about 2,380 a day
- GLM 5.29,907pull requests a month, about 330 a day
- GPT-5.5885pull requests a month, about 29 a day
Every model, priced for your workload
41 models, 32 hidden because their window is smaller than 64K tokens.
| Model | A month | Per pull request | Benchmark | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash DeepSeekBudget pick | $0.840 | $0.0014 | 10.00 (6) | 1.05M |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 DeepSeek | $0.931 | $0.0016 | 10.00 (6) | 1.05M |
| Llama 4 Scout Metabelow the bar | $1.18 | $0.0020 | 7.67 (6) | 1.31M |
| Ministral 3 8B 2512 Mistral AIbelow the bar | $1.37 | $0.0023 | 5.50 (6) | 262K |
| Qwen3.8 Flash Alibaba | $1.66 | $0.0028 | 10.00 (6) | 1M |
| GLM 5.3 Flash Z Aibelow the bar | $1.71 | $0.0029 | 8.50 (6) | 1.05M |
| Mistral Small 4 Mistral AI | $1.77 | $0.0029 | 10.00 (6) | 262K |
| GLM 5.3 Z Ai | $1.94 | $0.0032 | 10.00 (6) | 1.05M |
| GPT-5.4 Nano OpenAI | $2.76 | $0.0046 | 10.00 (6) | 400K |
| Qwen3.8 27B Alibaba | $2.94 | $0.0049 | 10.00 (6) | 1.02M |
| MiniMax M2.5 Minimax | $3.08 | $0.0051 | 10.00 (6) | 205K |
| Muse Glimmer 30B Meta | $3.56 | $0.0059 | 10.00 (6) | 131K |
Benchmark = mean judge score out of 10 on the code fix, reasoning prompts of the Model Playground, with the number of prompts in brackets. Models marked n/a have no benchmark run, so we do not guess their quality. How the benchmark works.
What we assumed
- Six hundred pull requests a month across a team.
- Each review reads the diff and nearby files, about 16,000 tokens.
- The review is about 1,000 words, roughly 1,400 tokens.
- 5% extra calls when a push re-triggers the review.
These are typical numbers, not measurements of your business. Edit them in the simulator above.
What drives the cost
The diff plus surrounding files go in as input on every push, and busy repos push often.
Watch out for
- Reviewing every push instead of the final one multiplies the bill by the number of pushes.
- Skip generated files, lock files and vendored code. They add tokens and no value.
Questions people ask
How much will code review for pull requests cost per month?
At 600 pull requests a month, we estimate $0.840 a month on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, the cheapest model that clears our quality bar for this job. GLM 5.2 costs $6.06 and GPT-5.5 costs $67.79. These are estimates from the assumptions listed on this page, not a quote. Change the numbers to match your own volume.
What is the cheapest AI model for code review for pull requests?
On current OpenRouter prices, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash from DeepSeek is the cheapest model that cleared our bar of 9.4 out of 10, scoring 10.0/10 on 6 benchmark prompts for this kind of work. The benchmark is small, so treat it as a shortlist and test on your own data before switching.
Is it worth paying for a flagship model for code review for pull requests?
On our benchmark, GPT-5.5 scored 10.0/10 on this kind of work, and a model priced near the middle of the models that cleared the bar, GLM 5.2, scored 10.0/10, while the flagship costs 11x as much. A flagship buys safety margin the benchmark cannot measure. If a wrong answer is expensive for you, that can be worth paying for. If not, you are probably overpaying.
What happens to the cost if code review for pull requests grows ten times?
Pay-per-use pricing scales in a straight line, so ten times the pull requests is ten times the bill. Use the growth table on this page to see 3x, 10x and 100x for the same three models.
What makes code review for pull requests expensive?
The diff plus surrounding files go in as input on every push, and busy repos push often.
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