Choose AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini if…
- cost matters at scale — it is 92% cheaper on a typical 3:1 input/output mix ($80.50 vs $975 a month for 50,000 support chats)
- you want the newer model — released 2026-09-23, 3 months after the other
AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini vs Sakana: Fugu Ultra
Neither wins outright: AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini is the pick when cost matters at scale, Sakana: Fugu Ultra when you need to fit long inputs in one request.
Key numbers
| Spec | AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini | Sakana: Fugu Ultra |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Aion Labs | Sakana |
| Input price (per 1M tokens) | $0.70 | $5.00 |
| Output price (per 1M tokens) | $1.40 | $30.00 |
| Blended price (3:1 input/output) | $0.87 | $11.25 |
| Cheaper than … of all models we track | 42% | 5% |
| Context window | 262K tokens (~393 pages) | 1M tokens (~1,500 pages) |
| Larger context than … of all models | 47% | 69% |
| Max output per response | 33K tokens (~24,600 words) | 128K tokens (~96,000 words) |
| Input types | text | text, image |
| Output types | text | text |
| Free variant | No | No |
| Listed since | 2026-09-23 | 2026-06-24 |
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What it costs for real workloads
Monthly cost at list price for five common workloads. Token counts per unit are stated so you can scale them to your own traffic. A workload that does not fit a model's context window is marked rather than priced.
| Workload (per month) | AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini | Sakana: Fugu Ultra | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer-support chatbot 50,000 conversations — each a 6-turn conversation (1,500 in / 400 out tokens) | $80.50 | $975 | AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini saves $895 |
| RAG search over documents 20,000 questions — each a question answered from ~8 retrieved passages (6,000 in / 500 out tokens) | $98.00 | $900 | AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini saves $802 |
| Coding / tool-using agent 2,000 tasks — each a multi-step task with tool calls and file context (60,000 in / 6,000 out tokens) | $101 | $960 | AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini saves $859 |
| Batch summarisation 10,000 documents — each a 6,000-word report summarised to a page (8,000 in / 600 out tokens) | $64.40 | $580 | AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini saves $516 |
| Long-document analysis 500 documents — each a 150-page contract or codebase read in one pass (100,000 in / 2,000 out tokens) | $36.40 | $280 | AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini saves $244 |
Capabilities side by side
| Capability | AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini | Sakana: Fugu Ultra | What it lets you do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tool / function calling | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | call your APIs and run agent loops |
| Structured output (JSON schema) | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | return JSON that validates against your schema |
| Reasoning / thinking mode | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | spend extra tokens thinking before answering hard problems |
| Image input | — | ✓ Yes | read screenshots, charts and scanned pages |
| Audio input | — | — | take speech or audio directly |
| File / PDF input | — | — | accept documents without your own parsing step |
| Image output | — | — | generate images, not just text |
| Built-in web search | — | ✓ Yes | answer from live web results |
| Seed (reproducible sampling) | — | — | repeat a generation for tests and evals |
| Log-probabilities | — | — | read token confidence for classification and scoring |
From each model's published parameters and input/output types. “—” means not advertised, not proven absent.
Price history
- AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini: price unchanged since we started tracking it on 2026-09-24.
- Sakana: Fugu Ultra: price unchanged since we started tracking it on 2026-08-06.
Which should you choose?
Choose Sakana: Fugu Ultra if…
- you need to fit long inputs in one request — 1M tokens is roughly 1,500 pages, against 393
- you need image input — to read screenshots, charts and scanned pages; AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini does not advertise it
- you need built-in web search — to answer from live web results; AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini does not advertise it
- you generate long outputs in one go — up to 128K tokens (about 96,000 words) per response
Frequently asked questions
Is AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini better than Sakana: Fugu Ultra?
Neither wins outright: AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini is the pick when cost matters at scale, Sakana: Fugu Ultra when you need to fit long inputs in one request. In short: AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini when cost matters at scale, you want the newer model; Sakana: Fugu Ultra when you need to fit long inputs in one request, you need image input, you need built-in web search, you generate long outputs in one go.
Which is cheaper, AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini or Sakana: Fugu Ultra?
AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini is cheaper: $0.87 vs $11.25 per 1M tokens at a typical 3:1 input/output mix, 92% less. For 50,000 support conversations a month that is $80.50 against $975.
How much do AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini and Sakana: Fugu Ultra cost per million tokens?
AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini costs $0.70 per 1M input tokens and $1.40 per 1M output tokens; Sakana: Fugu Ultra costs $5.00 input and $30.00 output. Output tokens are billed separately, so long answers shift the gap.
Which has the bigger context window, AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini or Sakana: Fugu Ultra?
Sakana: Fugu Ultra: 1M tokens, about 1,500 pages, against 262K (about 393 pages) for AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini.
Do AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini and Sakana: Fugu Ultra support function calling and JSON output?
Tool calling — AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini: yes, Sakana: Fugu Ultra: yes. JSON-schema structured output — AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini: yes, Sakana: Fugu Ultra: yes.
Can AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini or Sakana: Fugu Ultra read images?
Only Sakana: Fugu Ultra accepts image input; AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini is text-only for input.
Is AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini or Sakana: Fugu Ultra free to use?
No free variant is listed for either; both are pay-per-token.
What is the maximum output length of AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini and Sakana: Fugu Ultra?
AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini can write up to 33K tokens (about 24,600 words) per response; Sakana: Fugu Ultra up to 128K (about 96,000 words).
When were AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini and Sakana: Fugu Ultra released?
AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini was listed on 2026-09-23; Sakana: Fugu Ultra on 2026-06-24.
About the two models
AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini
Aion 3.5 Mini is a multi-model roleplaying and storytelling system from AionLabs, built on the GLM family of models. It is the smaller, lower-cost sibling of Aion 3.5 and uses...
Full AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini specs →Sakana: Fugu Ultra
Fugu Ultra is the higher-performance model in Sakana AI's Fugu family. Rather than a single monolithic model, Fugu is a learned multi-agent orchestration system: a language model trained to route...
Full Sakana: Fugu Ultra specs →