Cheap models cost 52× less in ClickHouse test

ClickHouse tested 28 models on 201 production-derived analytics questions and found DeepSeek V4 Flash scored 11 points below Claude Fable 5.1 while the full run cost roughly $1 versus $52, in its agentic-analytics benchmark. That is a 52× cost gap for a bounded correctness trade, using a synthetic-but-truthful reconstruction of ClickHouse’s warehouse rather than a toy text-to-SQL set. Builders should replay representative warehouse questions before choosing a default model tier; the archive’s model cost-per-point analysis makes the same procurement lesson visible from another angle.