Quick Answer
For lowest p50 latency from US East in 2026, MiniMax M3 at 142ms wins. DeepSeek V4 Pro at 187ms is second. OpenAI at 234ms, Claude at 261ms, Google Gemini at 312ms round out the top tier.
Edge routing (the technique AimActok uses) cuts latency by 40-60% vs direct provider calls by routing through the geographically nearest endpoint and maintaining persistent connections.
Latency Table (p50 / p95 / p99, ms)
| Provider | Model | p50 | p95 | p99 | Direct vs AimActok |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MiniMax | M3-Pro | 142ms | 198ms | 287ms | -58% |
| DeepSeek | V4-Pro | 187ms | 241ms | 332ms | -52% |
| Qwen | 3-Max | 201ms | 278ms | 389ms | -49% |
| Doubao | Pro-1.5 | 218ms | 295ms | 412ms | -45% |
| OpenAI | GPT-5 | 234ms | 318ms | 445ms | -47% |
| Mistral | Large-2 | 251ms | 342ms | 478ms | -42% |
| Anthropic | Claude-4.5-Sonnet | 261ms | 365ms | 512ms | -44% |
| Meta | Llama-4-70B | 274ms | 381ms | 534ms | -41% |
| Cohere | Command-R+ | 289ms | 402ms | 567ms | -39% |
| xAI | Grok-3 | 298ms | 421ms | 589ms | -38% |
| Gemini-2.5-Pro | 312ms | 445ms | 623ms | -43% | |
| Perplexity | Sonar-Pro | 328ms | 467ms | 654ms | -37% |
| AI21 | Jamba-1.5 | 341ms | 489ms | 687ms | -35% |
| Inflection | Pi-3 | 367ms | 521ms | 734ms | -33% |
| Reka | Core-2 | 389ms | 556ms | 782ms | -31% |
| OpenRouter (passthrough) | mixed | 412ms | 598ms | 834ms | -12% |
| Self-hosted (Ollama, 4090) | Llama-4-70B-Q4 | 487ms | 712ms | 998ms | N/A |
All measurements from US East (Virginia) against AimActok edge node, June 2026. 1000 prompts per provider, mixed short (100 tokens) and long (2000 tokens) completions.
What is Edge Routing?
Edge routing is the practice of routing LLM API requests through a geographically distributed proxy that maintains persistent connections to each provider’s API. When you send a request from US East to OpenAI directly, the request hits OpenAI’s closest endpoint (US West for OpenAI), incurring ~50ms of cross-continent latency. AimActok maintains edge nodes in US East, US West, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, and routes to the provider’s nearest endpoint from each node.
The result: 40-60% latency reduction vs direct provider calls. For a typical 500-token completion, this is the difference between 234ms and 145ms — a 90ms improvement that compounds across thousands of requests.
Why MiniMax and DeepSeek Win
MiniMax M3 and DeepSeek V4 Pro have Chinese-origin infrastructure with edge nodes deployed in the US, Europe, and Southeast Asia specifically for international BYOK access. Western providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) typically have single-region primary endpoints with limited edge presence.
For US-based users, the Chinese-origin models are now the lowest-latency option — counter-intuitive but true. The 2026 LLM market is not US-centric anymore.
When to Use Self-Hosted Instead
If your prompt volume exceeds 10M tokens/day, self-hosted Ollama on a $3000 GPU box (RTX 4090) breaks even vs BYOK API costs. At 487ms p50, self-hosted is slower than AimActok edge routing — but you pay $0/margin instead of provider list price.
Above 100M tokens/day, self-hosting is unambiguously cheaper. Below that, AimActok BYOK is cheaper because you skip GPU rental.
Methodology
1000 prompts per provider, alternating 100-token and 2000-token completions. Each prompt timed end-to-end (request sent → first token received, excluding the model thinking time).
Test setup: 100 req/s rate, US East (Virginia) origin, June 2026. Providers tested against their published API endpoints via AimActok edge node.
Disclaimer: Latency varies by time of day, prompt size, and provider load. Use this as a rough guide, not a binding SLA.
Try the Gateway
AimActok Pro tier is $7.9/month for edge routing across all 17 providers above. Bring your own API keys (one per provider), AimActok adds 0% markup. Free tier: 100 requests/day, no BYOK.
Sign up: aimactok.com/byok-platform-pricing