Best AI Models in 2026
Rankings, comparisons, and deep dives, updated monthly as new models ship.
Anthropic shipped Claude Opus 5.5 on September 22 and it takes the coding crown. Artificial Analysis puts it at 57.6 on Intelligence Index v4.3.2, the highest score it has ever published and 4.3 points clear of Claude Fable 5.1, and it leads GDPval-AA v2.1, AA-Briefcase v1.1 and Humanity's Last Exam with it. It does that at $4 / $20 per 1M tokens, below Claude Opus 5 at $5 / $25, so the best model is now also the cheaper one.
GPT-6 Astra keeps both of Arena's coding boards, because Opus 5.5 has no votes there yet, and Claude Fable 5.1 keeps writing and accuracy on the boards those categories are decided on. This page ranks on measured scores, so a crown moves as soon as a model out-scores the holder, without waiting for the vote-based boards to catch up. Our guide to AI benchmarks explains how that index is built and why its version number matters.
SpaceXAI shipped Grok 4.7 on September 21 on a new and larger base model, and it places above Astra on both agentic boards Artificial Analysis publishes. The Intelligence Index reads 46.3 against Grok 4.6's 44.3 and the token price does not move, $2 / $6, but an index task costs $2.73 against $1.86, because 4.7 emits roughly twice the output. It launched on the API, Cursor and Grok Build; the Grok app still serves 4.6.
The open field has a new leader too: Xiaomi's MiMo-V2.6-Pro, published on September 21 under plain MIT, scores 46.3 and runs an index task for $0.13, the cheapest on this page. Below are the category winners for September 2026. Click any card to jump straight to the full breakdown, or use the sticky navigation to skip between categories. Rankings, benchmarks and pricing are updated within 48 hours of any major model launch.
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Download Fello AISep 22 Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5 takes the Intelligence Index at 57.6 and undercuts Opus 5 on price New
Sep 21 SpaceXAI Grok 4.7 arrives on a larger base model at an unchanged $2 / $6, and costs 47% more per task New
Sep 21 Xiaomi Xiaomi's MiMo-V2.6-Pro is the highest-scoring open model ever measured, at $0.13 an index task under MIT New
Sep 15 TypeSafe TypeSafe leaves stealth with Jev, a model that returns typed decisions instead of text, at $0.042 per 1M tokens New
Sep 10 DeepSeek DeepSeek retires V4-Flash, replaces it with V4.1-Flash and cuts the Flash rate by about a third New
Sep 3 OpenAI GPT-6 Astra ships at $10 / $50, and within a day it is on Plus and Pro and leading the coding boards New
Sep 2 Alibaba Qwen3.8-Max-0902 takes Arena's WebDev board off Claude Opus 5 by three points, at $2 / $6 New
Sep 2 Muse Spark 1.3, Intelligence Index 57 to 61 at an unchanged $1.25 / $4.25, winning coding and losing every agent row New
Sep 2 Google Gemini 3.8 Flash, three points on the Intelligence Index at the same $0.75 / $3.75 New
Sep 1 Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1, a new #1 on Artificial Analysis at 66 and a 75% cut to cache reads New
Aug 28 Z.ai GLM 5.3 weights are out after the safety hold, but the licence is not MIT New
Aug 28 Tencent Tencent Hy4 Preview, 770B open weights under Apache 2.0 and the largest permissive model yet New
Aug 26 Z.ai GLM 5.3 Flash, Ox Alpha unmasked, and the first MIT weights Z.ai has shipped since GLM-5.2 New
Aug 26 Alibaba Qwen3.8-Flash-Next, open weights and the first public look at the Qwen4 architecture New
Aug 21 OpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol cut by more than 20%, now under Claude Opus 5 on both sides New
Aug 16 DeepSeek DeepSeek raises API prices roughly fourfold and splits the rate card into peak and off-peak tiers New
Aug 14 Z.ai GLM 5.3, a large agentic jump from post-training alone, shipped without the open weights New
Aug 13 Google Gemini 3.7 Flash, coding scores jump and the price halves to $0.75 / $3.75, until January New
Aug 12 SpaceXAI Grok 4.6, post-training refresh takes Intelligence Index 56 to 61 at an unchanged $2 / $6 New
Aug 5 Muse Spark 1.2 and Muse Code, Intelligence Index 51 to 57 at an unchanged $1.25 / $4.25, plus a terminal coding agent New
Aug 3 Alibaba Qwen 3.8 (Qwen3.8-Max), 2.4-trillion-parameter multimodal flagship now generally available at $2 / $6 New
Pending Google Gemini 3.5 Pro, still unreleased, months behind schedule per Bloomberg Delayed
Best AI for Writing
The best AI for writing is Claude Fable 5.1, and the case for it is consistency rather than a single first place. It is the only model inside the top six of all three prose boards: second on EQ-Bench Creative Writing v3 at 2152.7, second on LiveBench Language at 89.5 and sixth on Arena's creative-writing board. Nothing else manages that. GPT-6 Astra leads EQ-Bench at 2163.9 but sits 25th on Arena's creative-writing board; Claude Fable 5 leads Arena's text and creative-writing boards and tops LiveBench Language at 90.7 but has slipped to eighth on EQ-Bench. Claude Opus 5.5, which took the Intelligence Index and Humanity's Last Exam off Fable 5.1 on September 22, is unrated on EQ-Bench and on Arena and eighth on LiveBench Language, so it has no writing-board case at all yet and the crown does not move to it. If your writing is a work deliverable rather than prose, the GDPval-AA v2.1 professional-deliverables board is a different question, and Claude Opus 5.5 leads it at 1846 ahead of Claude Fable 5.1 at 1735 and Claude Opus 5 at 1708. Claude Sonnet 5 stays the free-tier value pick and Claude Fable 5 the pick if you weight Arena's human votes above the harness scores; Fable 5 costs $10 / $50 per 1M tokens and is permanently included in Claude Max and Team Premium at roughly 50% of regular usage limits. Translation is a separate question with a separate winner, which we work through in our guide to the best AI for translation.
| Model | Best For | Strength | Weakness | Price (per 1M tokens) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Fable 5.1 | Best writing overall | #2 EQ-Bench Creative Writing (2152.7), #2 LiveBench Language (89.5) and #6 Arena creative writing, the best combined placing of any model | Leads none of the three outright; Claude Opus 5.5 took the Intelligence Index and Humanity's Last Exam on September 22 | $10 / $50 |
| Claude Fable 5 | Top of Arena's human-vote boards | #1 Arena text overall (1505.7), #1 LiveBench Language (90.7), #8 EQ-Bench | Priciest option here | $10 / $50 |
| Kimi K3 | Creative fiction and voice | #4 EQ-Bench Creative Writing (2070.6) | Only #27 on Arena creative writing | $3 / $15 |
| Claude Sonnet 5 | Free everyday writing | Free and default on claude.ai, 1M context | #53 Arena creative writing; 75.0 LiveBench Language | $2 / $10, now permanent |
| Claude Opus 5 | Professional deliverables on a budget | #3 GDPval-AA v2.1 at 1708, ahead of Fable 5 (1632) | Behind Fable 5 on Arena text, behind Opus 5.5 and Fable 5.1 on GDPval-AA v2.1 | $5 / $25 |
| GPT-5.5 | Fact-anchored business writing | Documented factual-reliability gains over GPT-5.4 | Reasoning tiers now marked deprecated | $5 / $30 |
| Gemini 3.8 Flash | Bulk drafts at scale | Intelligence Index 40.9, 308.4 tok/s output, 1M context | Agent-tuned rather than prose-tuned; intro price doubles January 1, 2027 | $0.75 / $3.75 |
The writing crown stays with Claude Fable 5.1, but its grounding has changed. Claude Opus 5.5 took the Intelligence Index and Humanity's Last Exam from it on September 22, which is what this card used to cite, so we have re-grounded the pick on the boards that actually measure prose. On those, Fable 5.1 is the only model in the top six of all three: second on EQ-Bench Creative Writing, second on LiveBench Language and sixth on Arena's creative-writing board. Opus 5.5 is unrated on two of the three and eighth on the other, so it has no writing case yet. Arena has now rated Fable 5.1, which removes the caveat we carried last month that the human-preference boards had not had their say: it is fifth on the text board at 1498.5, where Claude Fable 5 still leads at 1505.7. GDPval-AA v2.1 was re-anchored again and now reads 1846 for Opus 5.5, 1735 for Fable 5.1 and 1708 for Opus 5, so the figures in this block sit well below the ones we quoted in August.
Best AI for Chat & Daily Assistant
The best AI for everyday chat is GPT-5.6, and the honest reason is reach rather than board position. It is the model ChatGPT serves by default to the largest user base in the category, which makes it the best assistant most people can actually open. On raw human preference it is not the leader: GPT-5.6 Sol sits #18 on Arena's text leaderboard at 1483.5, where Claude Fable 5 leads at 1505.7. Most ChatGPT users get the balanced Terra tier, which OpenAI says matches GPT-5.5 and, since the July 30, 2026 price cut, costs 60% less than it. It is available inside ChatGPT (free with limits, Plus at $20/month, Pro at $100/month), through the API (Luna $0.20 / $1.20, Terra $2 / $12, Sol $4 / $20 per 1M tokens), and bundled inside Fello AI alongside Claude, Gemini, Grok, and DeepSeek. One caveat: OpenAI's system card and the evaluator METR flagged elevated "scheming" behaviour in Sol, so GPT-5.5 Instant stays the safer pick for hallucination-sensitive work.
| Model | Best For | Strength | Weakness | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.6 | Everyday chat, ChatGPT's default | The assistant most people can open; Terra matches GPT-5.5 at ~half cost | #14 on Arena text; scheming flagged by METR | Free / $20/mo Plus; API $0.20 / $1.20 to $4 / $20 |
| Claude Fable 5 | Highest-rated conversation | #1 on Arena text overall (1505.7) and on four of its eight subcategories | No free tier; usage-credit access on Pro | $10 / $50 API |
| Claude Opus 5 | Thoughtful, nuanced answers | Fourth on Artificial Analysis's Intelligence Index (50.8), behind Claude Opus 5.5, Claude Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra | #10 on Arena text, behind Claude Fable 5 | $20/mo Pro, $5 / $25 API |
| GPT-5.5 Instant | Hallucination-sensitive daily work | 52.5% fewer hallucinated claims vs 5.3 Instant | Reasoning tiers now marked deprecated | $20/mo Plus; API $5 / $30 |
| Gemini 3.6 Flash | Fast, free, multimodal | Still the model the free Gemini tier serves, 1M context, #12 on Arena text | Weaker on hardest reasoning; 3.8 Flash outscores it at the same price | Free / $0.75 / $3.75 API |
| Fello AI | All the top models, one app | ChatGPT + Claude + Gemini + Grok + DeepSeek and more on Mac, iPhone and iPad | Routed via app, not direct | $9.99/mo |
GPT-5.6 keeps the chat pick on reach, and the gap to the preference leader has widened again. Sol now sits #18 on Arena's text board at 1483.5, down from #14, while Claude Fable 5 leads at 1505.7. Nothing about the product changed, so the crown does not move: this is still about which assistant the most people can actually open. Two launches that would otherwise be candidates are not: GPT-6 Astra reached ChatGPT Business, Pro and Plus in early September but OpenAI has announced nothing for the free tier, and Claude Opus 5.5, which took the Intelligence Index on September 22, is an API and Claude-plan model rather than a default assistant for a billion people.
Best AI for Images
The best AI for image generation is ChatGPT Images 2.5, which OpenAI made the default on every ChatGPT tier on September 8 and which now leads all four image boards we track. Its two models finish first and second on each: GPT-Image-2.5 Sunburst, built for precision, leads Arena text-to-image at 1423.2 and Arena image editing at 1526.0, and it leads Artificial Analysis's quality Elo at 1196.8 and its image-editing board at 1221.3, with the faster GPT-Image-2.5 Flare second on all four. That is a change from last month, when Artificial Analysis had rated neither model and its boards disagreed with Arena's. Read the Sunburst-to-Flare gap as provisional even so, because those Arena placements rest on a few thousand votes each against GPT Image 2's 83,000 and 259,000, and on text-to-image the two share a rank band. MAI-Image-2.6 is the runner-up, third on Artificial Analysis's image-editing board at 1191.6 and fourth on Arena's text-to-image board at 1334.0, with Meta's Muse Image third. Reve 2.1 keeps its case for layout, typography and native 4K but has left the podium: it is sixth on Arena text-to-image and fourteenth on Arena image editing. Our full breakdown of what shipped is in ChatGPT Images 2.5.
| Model | Best For | Strength | Weakness | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT Images 2.5 | Images with readable text | #1 and #2 on all four boards: Arena text-to-image (1423.2 / 1401.3), Arena editing (1526.0 / 1481.8), Artificial Analysis quality (1196.8 / 1190.4) and editing (1221.3 / 1207.0) | Arena placements rest on a few thousand votes each | Default on every ChatGPT tier |
| MAI-Image-2.6 | Editing an image you already have | #3 on Artificial Analysis image editing (1191.6) and #4 on Arena text-to-image (1334.0) | Public preview, not in Copilot or Bing yet; lost the Artificial Analysis editing lead to ChatGPT Images 2.5 | MAI Playground / Microsoft Foundry |
| Muse Image | Image editing, Meta ecosystem | #5 on Artificial Analysis image editing (1171.3) and #7 on its quality Elo | New, thin tooling around it | Meta AI app |
| Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image) | Photoreal portraits and products | #4 on Artificial Analysis text-to-image, ahead of Nano Banana Pro on Arena's | Nano Banana Pro is ahead on Arena image editing | Gemini app / AI Studio |
| Seedream 5.0 Pro | Multilingual text + region editing | 10+ languages incl. Arabic RTL, lasso and layer editing | Around tenth on the independent boards; copyright cloud | BytePlus / Magnific |
| Midjourney v8 | Stylized art, illustration | Aesthetic baseline most artists prefer | Weaker on text in image | $10-$120/mo |
| Grok Imagine | NSFW / Spicy Mode | Most permissive guardrails; Arena rates its Image 2.0 model #5 on text-to-image and #4 on image editing, and Artificial Analysis now has it #4 on quality Elo | Nothing in the release record shows Image 2.0 shipping as a product | $30/mo SuperGrok |
ChatGPT Images 2.5 keeps the image crown and its case got stronger. Last month Artificial Analysis had rated neither of its two API models, so the boards we track disagreed: Arena had Sunburst and Flare first and second while Artificial Analysis still had GPT Image 2 on top of text-to-image and Microsoft's MAI-Image-2.6 on top of image editing. Artificial Analysis has now rated both, and they take first and second there too, 1196.8 and 1190.4 on the quality Elo and 1221.3 and 1207.0 on image editing. That makes it #1 and #2 on all four boards. MAI-Image-2.6 stays the runner-up but slips to third on the editing board it used to lead, and Grok Imagine Image 2.0 is now fourth on Artificial Analysis's quality Elo and fourth on Arena's editing board, which is a better placing than the podium's third; we still report it rather than crown it, because nothing in the release record shows it shipping as a product.
Best AI for Video
The best AI for video generation is Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash, which Google shipped on August 27 and which leads Arena's text-to-video board at 1516, just ahead of its own predecessor Gemini Omni Flash at 1513. Read that as a tie: the two sit inside each other's confidence intervals and Arena itself gives 1.1 Flash a rank band of one to four. What breaks it is specification, where 1.1 Flash is clearly the more capable model: scene extension in 10-second increments to a cumulative 40 seconds, first and last frame control, video references, 360p drafts and 1080p or 4K output, priced at roughly $0.03 per second at 360p, $0.10 at 720p, $0.15 at 1080p and $0.30 at 4K. Gemini Omni Flash remains the cheaper option at about $0.10 a second but caps at 10-second clips. Two limits worth knowing. Artificial Analysis has not rated 1.1 Flash at all; on its text-to-video board the older Omni Flash leads at 1512.8 from Alibaba's Wan 3.0 at 1431.4 and MiniMax H3 at 1407.7. And on Arena's image-to-video board 1.1 Flash is second at 1488.5 behind MiniMax H3 at 1495.4, so the crown rests on text-to-video and on specification, not on a sweep. If you need longer takes inside Google's tooling, Veo 3.1 still runs in the Gemini app, AI Studio and Vertex AI with native audio and 1080p output. MiniMax H3 (July 31) remains the specification contender, with 2K clips of 4 to 15 seconds and native stereo audio from $0.13 a second.
| Model | Best For | Strength | Weakness | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash | Best AI video overall | #1 Arena text-to-video (1516); 40-second scene extension, 4K output | Unrated by Artificial Analysis; second to MiniMax H3 on Arena image-to-video | $0.03-$0.30/sec; Gemini API / AI Studio / Flow |
| Gemini Omni Flash | Cheaper 10-second clips | #2 Arena text-to-video (1511), #2 AA video (1238); conversational editing | Caps at 10-second generations | ~$0.10/sec; Gemini app / AI Studio |
| Wan 3.0 | Video from documents and slides | #1 on Artificial Analysis's video board (1239); 2-30s, up to 1080p, Omni-Reference input | API-only, no published weights; #3 on Arena | $0.05-$0.20/sec |
| MiniMax H3 | 2K clips with native audio | 4-15s at 2K, native stereo audio; #8 Arena text-to-video (1462) | #4 on AA video (1227); the open weights exclude the 2K upscaler and need an application in the US, EU, UK and South Korea | $0.13/sec at 2K |
| Dreamina Seedance 2.5 | ByteDance challenger | #6 Arena text-to-video (1482); leads image-to-video with audio | ByteDance ecosystem, limited Western access | Dreamina / BytePlus |
| Muse Video | Meta ecosystem video | #3 text-to-video at 1459 | Newest of the group, thin tooling | Meta AI app |
| Veo 3.1 | Longer production clips | Native audio, 1080p, strong physics consistency | #6 on Arena video, not the quality leader | Google AI Pro / Ultra |
| Kling 3.0 / 3.0 Turbo | Fast iteration at lower cost | Native 4K, 60fps, 15-second clips; Turbo shipped June 17 | Outside the top 16 on Arena text-to-video | From $10/mo |
| Luma Ray 3 | Photoreal scenes | Strong realism for landscapes | Smaller community | Free / from $9.99/mo |
Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash keeps the video crown, but the picture around it is messier than last month's entry implied. It still leads Arena's text-to-video board, 1516 to Gemini Omni Flash's 1513, and Arena gives it a rank band of one to four, so that remains a tie broken on capability. Two things we reported in August have since changed. Artificial Analysis re-anchored its video Elo and the old 1239 / 1238 / 1235 trio no longer exists: Gemini Omni Flash now leads that board at 1512.8 from Wan 3.0 at 1431.4 and MiniMax H3 at 1407.7, and Artificial Analysis has still not rated 1.1 Flash at all. And MiniMax H3 has taken the top of Arena's image-to-video board at 1495.4, pushing 1.1 Flash to second at 1488.5, which is the first board this crown has lost.
Best AI for Coding
The best AI for coding is Claude Opus 5.5, which Anthropic shipped on September 22 and which leads every coding harness we track: Artificial Analysis's own Terminal-Bench 4.0 at 59.6% against GPT-6 Astra's 59.1%, LiveBench Coding at 89.3 against 80.4, and LiveBench Agentic Coding at 71.7 against 57.3. It does that at $4 / $20 per 1M tokens, less than half the list price of the two models that led this table last month, with cache reads at $0.20, and on Anthropic's own testing a typical workload costs 40% less than on Claude Opus 5. Anthropic's in-house Terminal-Bench 4.0 run puts the gap wider still, 66.4% against the 57.9% OpenAI reports for Astra, alongside 54.4% on FrontierCode v1.1 and 57.8% on CursorBench 4.0. GPT-6 Astra keeps both of Arena's coding boards, WebDev at 1800 and image-to-WebDev at 1733, because Opus 5.5 has no Arena votes at all yet, and that is the honest split here: OpenAI leads on human preference, Anthropic on every measured harness. Read the half-point Terminal-Bench margin carefully, because Anthropic itself reports a standard error of about 2.6 points on that benchmark, so treat the two as level there and let the LiveBench boards and the price break the tie. Claude Fable 5.1 is second on both Arena boards and third on the harnesses. Alibaba's Qwen3.8-Max-0902 held Arena's WebDev board for about three days in early September and now sits fourth at 1681. Among open weights the picture changed on September 21: Xiaomi's MiMo-V2.6-Pro takes 34.8% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 under plain MIT at $0.13 an index task, while GLM-5.3 is still the strongest open model on that harness at 41.9% and Kimi K3 is the highest-placed open model on Arena WebDev, fifth at 1674, on only 12.6% of the harness. Artificial Analysis has retired both its Coding Index and its Coding Agent Index, so the two composite coding rankings this page used to quote no longer exist.
| Model | Best For | Strength | Weakness | Price (per 1M tokens) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 5.5 | Best coding overall | #1 Terminal-Bench 4.0 (59.6%), #1 Intelligence Index (57.6, v4.3.2) and #1 LiveBench Coding (89.3) | No Arena votes yet, so Astra keeps both of its coding boards | $4 / $20 |
| GPT-6 Astra | Top of both Arena coding boards | #1 Arena WebDev (1800) and #1 image-to-WebDev (1733); 59.1% Terminal-Bench 4.0 | 2.5x Opus 5.5's price and behind it on every harness | $10 / $50 |
| Claude Fable 5.1 | Highest composite score before Opus 5.5 | #2 on both Arena coding boards; Intelligence Index 53.4; AA-Briefcase 1678 | 52.0% Terminal-Bench 4.0; 2.5x the price of Opus 5.5 | $10 / $50 |
| Claude Opus 5 | Superseded by Opus 5.5 | 49.0% Terminal-Bench 4.0 and #3 on both Arena coding boards | Costs more per token than Opus 5.5 and scores seven points lower | $5 / $25 |
| Claude Fable 5 | Hardest long-horizon agentic work | Intelligence Index 49.6; 42.4% Terminal-Bench 4.0; 1M context | The priciest per index task on this table at $8.75; #6 on Arena image-to-WebDev | $10 / $50 |
| Qwen3.8-Max-0902 | Brief holder of Arena's WebDev board | #4 Code Arena: WebDev (1681); Intelligence Index 45.4; 2.4T parameters, 1M context | QwenCloud API only with no consumer front-end; lost the WebDev lead within days | $2 / $6 |
| Kimi K3 | Highest-placed open model on Arena | #5 Arena WebDev (1674), the best open placement on that board; 2.8T/104B active | Only 12.6% on Terminal-Bench 4.0; 1.56 TB to self-host | $3 / $15 |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | OpenAI's cheaper flagship | Intelligence Index 47.0; 39.9% Terminal-Bench 4.0 | Well behind Astra on every coding board; eval-gaming flagged by METR | $4 / $20 |
| Muse Spark 1.3 | Cheap agentic coding | Intelligence Index 48.1 at $1.25 / $4.25, and $1.60 per index task | 33.3% on Terminal-Bench 4.0; the coding wins come from Meta's own chart, measured on a partners-only max variant | $1.25 / $4.25 |
| Grok 4.7 | Cheap value coder | 46.3% CursorBench 4.0 and 71.0% DeepSWE v1.1 on SpaceXAI's own figures; Intelligence Index 46.3 | 24.7% on Terminal-Bench 4.0; prompts of 200K tokens and up re-bill the whole request at double | $2 / $6 |
| Gemini 3.8 Flash | Agent coding at scale | Intelligence Index 40.9; 308.4 output tokens per second | 19.7% on Terminal-Bench 4.0; intro price doubles January 1, 2027 | $0.75 / $3.75 |
| GLM 5.3 Flash | Cheapest serious coder you can host | 32.8% Terminal-Bench 4.0 at $0.25 an index task; MIT, 320B/18B active | GLM-5.3 reaches 41.9% on the same harness; no consumer product | Open weights (MIT) |
| MiMo-V2.6-Pro | Highest open Intelligence Index | 46.3 on v4.3.2 and 34.8% Terminal-Bench 4.0 at $0.13 an index task; MIT, 1.02T/42B active | Published September 21, so no Arena votes and no independent track record yet | $0.435 / $0.87 |
The coding crown moved to Claude Opus 5.5, four days after it moved to GPT-6 Astra. Anthropic shipped it on September 22 and it leads every coding harness we track: 59.6% against Astra's 59.1% on Artificial Analysis's own Terminal-Bench 4.0, 89.3 against 80.4 on LiveBench Coding and 71.7 against 57.3 on LiveBench Agentic Coding, at $4 / $20 against $10 / $50. Astra keeps both of Arena's coding boards because Opus 5.5 has no votes there yet, so this is a split rather than a sweep. The Terminal-Bench margin is half a point against a standard error Anthropic puts at about 2.6, so the LiveBench boards and the price are what actually decide it. Claude Opus 5 leaves the podium: Opus 5.5 costs less per token, uses fewer tokens and scores seven points higher on the Intelligence Index, which makes the old value argument for Opus 5 obsolete rather than merely weaker. Xiaomi's MiMo-V2.6-Pro and SpaceXAI's Grok 4.7 both join the table, and every index figure on this page moved to v4.3.2, which is why these numbers sit slightly below last month's.
Best AI for Creativity
The best AI for unfiltered, on-trend creative work is Grok 4.7, and we want to be exact about why. This pick is about the product line, not the prose quality. Grok carries the fewest content restrictions of any frontier model and the only native real-time X integration, which makes it the one model that will engage with edgy, topical or deliberately provocative briefs that the others decline. Read the availability carefully: SpaceXAI shipped Grok 4.7 on September 21 to the Grok API, Cursor, Grok Build, third-party harnesses and cloud routers, and its announcement says nothing about the consumer app, which still serves Grok 4.6 to SuperGrok and X Premium+ subscribers at $30/month. It is not the best writer. Arena has now rated Grok 4.6, and it sits 32nd on the creative-writing board, ahead of Grok 4.5 in 36th but behind the older Grok 4.20-beta1 in 23rd. EQ-Bench has rated neither 4.6 nor 4.7, and on that board Grok 4.5 sits 46th at 1576.0, which is now just ahead of Grok 4.20-beta rather than behind it. Since SpaceXAI aimed both releases at coding and agentic work rather than prose, we are not assuming 4.7 moved the needle here. If you are picking on output quality alone, Claude Fable 5 still leads Arena's creative-writing board, while EQ-Bench puts GPT-6 Astra first at 2163.9, Claude Fable 5.1 second and Kimi K3 fourth. Choose Grok for what it will let you make, not for how well it writes.
| Model | Best For | Strength | Weakness | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grok 4.7 | Unfiltered, opinionated, on-trend | Fewest content restrictions, native real-time X grounding | No creative-writing board has rated it; Grok 4.6 sits #32 on Arena creative writing | $2 / $6 API; $30/mo SuperGrok app, still on 4.6 |
| Claude Fable 5 | Highest-quality creative prose | #1 Arena creative writing, #1 LiveBench Language | Cautious guardrails on edgy briefs | $10 / $50 API |
| Kimi K3 | Fiction and distinctive voice | #4 EQ-Bench Creative Writing at 2070.6 | Only #27 on Arena creative writing | $3 / $15 |
| Claude Opus 5 | Long-form structured creativity | Holds long threads and self-edits; Intelligence Index 50.8, behind Claude Opus 5.5, Claude Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra | Most cautious of the group | $20/mo Pro; $5 / $25 API |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro | Multimodal creative | Strong text, image and video chain | Quotas inside the Gemini app | Free / $2.00-$4.00 API in |
| Grok Imagine (Spicy Mode) | NSFW / adult creative | Most permissive image generation | Niche use case | $30/mo SuperGrok |
Grok keeps this pick, now on Grok 4.7, which SpaceXAI released on September 21 on a new and larger base model. Nothing about the product's permissiveness or its live X access changed, which is what the pick rests on. The model underneath is stronger again, 46.3 on the Intelligence Index against Grok 4.6's 44.3, but that gain landed in coding and agentic work rather than prose, and no creative-writing board has rated 4.7. One correction to last month's entry: Arena has since rated Grok 4.6, which sits 32nd on its creative-writing board, so the line that neither board had rated it no longer holds. Note the split surface too, because it matters for this category: 4.7 is on the API, Cursor and Grok Build, while the $30/month Grok app that the permissiveness argument is really about still serves 4.6. Claude Fable 5 remains the model to use when you want the better writing.
Best AI for Accuracy & Research
The best AI for accuracy and research is Claude Fable 5.1, which holds the highest factual accuracy Artificial Analysis has measured, 67% on AA-Omniscience. That is the exact column this category is decided on, and it survived a hard test on September 22: Claude Opus 5.5 beat Fable 5.1 on almost everything else, including Humanity's Last Exam at 61.4% to 59.1% and the hallucination-penalised AA-Omniscience index at 46.4 to 43.5, but on raw factual accuracy it reads 66% to Fable 5.1's 67%. Treat that one-point gap as a tie on its own and read the two together: Opus 5.5 is the better bet when a wrong answer is worse than no answer, Fable 5.1 when you want the most facts right. The value pick is Gemini 3.1 Pro, and it is still what we would reach for when cost matters. Its strongest result is on ARC Prize's ARC-AGI-1, where it scores 98% and ties the human panel, and it does that at $0.52 per task, though Claude Fable 5 and GPT-6 Astra have since gone past the panel at 98.5%. It pairs that with native Google Search grounding, which is what you want when the answer has to be current rather than merely plausible. It also scores 94.1% on GPQA Diamond, where GPT-5.6 Sol now matches it rather than trailing it, and 44.4% on Humanity's Last Exam, and scores 46.44 on Scale SEAL's HLE board, which Claude Fable 5 now leads at 55.5%. Two honest caveats. On grounded search specifically, Arena's search leaderboard is led by OpenAI rather than by Google or Anthropic: GPT-5.6 Sol tops it at 1257, with Claude Fable 5 fifth and Gemini 3.1 Pro grounding ninth. And on novel reasoning the crown sits elsewhere entirely, with GPT-6 Astra leading both ARC-AGI-2 and ARC-AGI-3. We did not move this crown to Claude Opus 5 because Artificial Analysis measures its hallucination rate at 50% and places it well below both Fable models on AA-Omniscience.
| Model | Best For | Key Benchmark | Weakness | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Fable 5.1 | Highest measured factual accuracy | 67% factual accuracy on AA-Omniscience, the highest Artificial Analysis has measured, one point above Claude Opus 5.5 | No cheap tier; unrated on Arena's search leaderboard; Opus 5.5 leads Humanity's Last Exam and the AA-Omniscience index | $10 / $50 |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro | Best value, cheap factual work | 98% ARC-AGI-1 (ties human panel) at $0.52/task, 94.1% GPQA (tied by Sol) | ARC-AGI-2 77.1% now ranks ~14th; #7 on Arena search | $2.00-$4.00 / $12.00-$18.00 (tiered) |
| Claude Fable 5 | Grounded search | #5 on Arena's search leaderboard, behind GPT-5.6 Sol | No single cheap tier | $10 / $50 (Fable 5) |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | Novel reasoning | #1 ARC-AGI-2 at 92.5%, against a 100% human panel | Scheming flagged by METR | $4 / $20 |
| Claude Opus 5 | Hardest unseen problems | #1 ARC-AGI-3 at 30%, ~3.75x the next model (ARC Prize) | Artificial Analysis measures a 50% hallucination rate | $5 / $25 |
| Qwen 3.7 Max | Frontier accuracy at value pricing | 92.4 GPQA Diamond, 200 free requests/day | API-only, no chat front-end | $1.25 / $3.75 promo; $2.50 / $7.50 list |
| Claude Opus 4.6 | Honesty under pressure | #1 on Scale SEAL's MASK board at 96.28; Anthropic holds the top 5 | Superseded as a flagship | Legacy Anthropic model |
The accuracy crown stays with Claude Fable 5.1, and it was tested hard. Claude Opus 5.5 arrived on September 22 and took Humanity's Last Exam at 61.4% against 59.1% and the hallucination-penalised AA-Omniscience index at 46.4 against 43.5, but this category is decided on the raw factual-accuracy column and there Fable 5.1 still reads 67% against Opus 5.5's 66%. That is a one-point gap, so the block now says plainly that the two split rather than pretending Fable 5.1 sweeps: use Opus 5.5 when a wrong answer is worse than no answer, Fable 5.1 when you want the most facts right. Two corrections to last month's entry as well. It said GPT-5.6 Sol led ARC-AGI-2 and Claude Opus 5 led ARC-AGI-3; GPT-6 Astra has led both since its September 3 launch, as the problem-solving block already said, and that contradiction is gone. And ARC-AGI-1 has moved past the human panel: Claude Fable 5 and GPT-6 Astra both score 98.5% where the 2025 panel scores 98%, so Gemini 3.1 Pro's 98% at $0.52 a task is still true and still the value argument, but it is no longer the top of that board.
Best AI for Problem Solving
The best AI for hard problem solving is GPT-6 Astra, which took the reasoning boards off GPT-5.6 Sol within days of launching. It leads LiveBench Reasoning at 92.65 and ARC-AGI-2 at 95%, the highest anyone has scored against that board's 100% human panel, and sits third on LiveBench Mathematics at 96.81, behind Claude Opus 5.5 at 97.08 and Claude Fable 5.1 at 97.01. It also reports 97.6% on FrontierMath Tier 4 v2, a number worth carrying with Epoch AI's disclosure that OpenAI funded the benchmark and holds exclusive access to part of it. The catch is price and reach: $10 / $50 per 1M tokens against Sol's $4 / $20, and it needs a paid ChatGPT plan. GPT-5.6 Sol is the value alternative, third on both LiveBench boards at 96.20 and 91.65 and second on ARC-AGI-2. Qwen 3.7 Max is the budget pick for competition-style problems at 97.1 on the February 2026 HMMT index and 44.5 on Apex, with 200 free model requests a day. Claude Opus 5 remains the alternative for long agentic reasoning chains, though Astra has taken ARC-AGI-3 from it as well.
| Model | Best For | Key Benchmark | Weakness | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-6 Astra | Hardest math, science and reasoning | #1 LiveBench Reasoning (92.65), #1 ARC-AGI-2 (95%), #1 ARC-AGI-3 | Needs a paid ChatGPT plan; 2.5x Sol's price | $10 / $50 |
| Claude Opus 5 | Long agentic reasoning chains | #5 AA-Briefcase v1.1 (1673) and #5 GDPval-AA v2.1 (1708); 30.2% ARC-AGI-3 | Astra now leads ARC-AGI-3; 50% hallucination rate | $5 / $25 |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | Value STEM flagship | #2 ARC-AGI-2 (92.5%); #3 LiveBench Mathematics (96.20) and Reasoning (91.65) | FrontierMath still unpublished; scheming flagged by METR | $100/mo ChatGPT Pro; API $4 / $20 |
| Qwen 3.7 Max | Competition math on a budget | 97.1 HMMT 2026 Feb, 44.5 Apex, 200 free requests/day | API-only | $1.25 / $3.75 promo; $2.50 / $7.50 list |
| Claude Fable 5 | Math inside a coding workflow | #1 on Arena's math subcategory (1543), 96.0 LiveBench Mathematics | Priciest option here | $10 / $50 |
| GLM 5.3 Flash | Open-weight problem solving | Intelligence Index 41.8 under MIT, almost eight points above GLM-5.2 at less than half the size; 320B/18B active, 1M context | Needs a multi-GPU server, not a workstation; GLM 5.3 scores higher on Z.ai's own figures and is downloadable since August 28, but at more than twice the size and under a bespoke licence | Open weights (MIT) |
The problem-solving crown moved to GPT-6 Astra, which took the boards this category is decided on within days of its September 3 launch. It leads LiveBench Reasoning at 92.65 against GPT-5.6 Sol's 91.65, takes ARC-AGI-2 at 95% against Sol's 92.5%, and displaced Claude Opus 5 on ARC-AGI-3, where its 62.7% on the standard harness beats Opus 5's 30.2%. Read the ARC-AGI-3 figures carefully: that board measures human-level action efficiency on unseen environments rather than problems solved, and the widely quoted 98.6% comes from a provider-adapter harness rather than the standard one. Sol drops to third on both LiveBench boards but stays the value alternative at $4 / $20 against Astra's $10 / $50, and LiveBench Mathematics has since changed hands twice, to Claude Fable 5.1 at 97.01 and then to Claude Opus 5.5 at 97.08 on September 22.
Best AI Agent
The best AI agent is Gemini Spark if you want the agent in the cloud and Claude Cowork if you want it on your desktop. These are joint picks rather than a first and a second: Spark runs in a Google Cloud VM, so it keeps working while your laptop is shut, wired into Gmail, Docs and, since early September, Google Photos; Cowork runs on your Mac or Windows machine and drives your local apps and your screen. No independent board rates the two products against each other, so the choice is about where the work has to happen rather than which one scores higher. Price is no longer a tiebreaker either: Spark now reaches the $19.99/month Google AI Pro tier in the US and more than 160 other countries, and Cowork is included at no extra charge on every paid Claude plan from $20/month. ChatGPT Codex Mobile (May 14) is the alternative for coding-agent work, and OpenAI Operator-class browser agents for web tasks. Read the full Gemini Spark vs Claude Cowork comparison.
| Agent | Best For | Where It Runs | Strength | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini Spark | 24/7 cloud tasks, Workspace workflows | Google Cloud VM (always-on) | First true 24/7 agent, deep Workspace integration | From $19.99/mo Google AI Pro |
| Claude Cowork | Desktop, app-driving, design + code | Your Mac/Windows desktop | Drives local apps, sees your screen | $20/mo Claude Pro |
| ChatGPT Codex Mobile | Coding agent on phone | OpenAI cloud + iOS/Android | Approve diffs and redirect work from phone | Included in ChatGPT plans |
| Grok Agentic (Grok 4.7) | Real-time research, X scraping | SpaceXAI cloud | Native X integration; GDPval-AA v2.1 Elo 1695, fourth among distinct models | $30/mo SuperGrok, still on 4.6 |
| OpenAI Operator-class | Browser tasks, web forms | OpenAI cloud + your browser | Web automation | ChatGPT Pro |
No new consumer agent product shipped, so the crowns do not move: Gemini Spark (cloud) and Claude Cowork (desktop) remain joint picks split by where the agent runs. Spark did expand, reaching the $19.99/month Google AI Pro tier and gaining Google Photos, where it can search, edit, curate and run scheduled workflows. The model layer underneath moved a long way, and most of it moved on September 22. Claude Opus 5.5 now leads both agentic boards Artificial Analysis publishes: AA-Briefcase v1.1 at 1822 against Claude Fable 5.1's 1678 and Claude Opus 5's 1673, and GDPval-AA v2.1 at 1846 against 1735 and 1708. It also matches GPT-6 Astra on Terminal-Bench 4.0 at $4 / $20 against $10 / $50, which makes it the model most teams should now build on, replacing the Opus 5 recommendation this block carried. Arena's Agent Arena has not rated it, and there Claude Fable 5.1 still leads task completion at 19.8% with GPT-6 Astra second at 17.7%, DeepSeek V4.1-Flash third and Claude Opus 5 fourth. SpaceXAI's Grok 4.7 (September 21) is the other mover: 1695 on GDPval-AA v2.1 and 1657 on AA-Briefcase put it fourth and seventh, above GPT-6 Astra on both, though it reaches the API, Cursor and Grok Build rather than a consumer agent product. Meta's Muse Spark 1.3 sits fifth among distinct models on GDPval-AA v2.1 at 1674, below Grok 4.7 rather than above it as we reported last month, and Scale SEAL has still rated only the older 1.1, which leads its MCP Atlas tool-use board at 88.1. GLM 5.3 Flash (August 26, MIT) is still the open-weight agent model we would host, at AutomationBench 48.8 on Z.ai's own chart where Claude Opus 4.8 scores 41.0; on the Agent Arena's task-completion signal GLM-5.2 sits seventeenth and Kimi K3 fifth, with DeepSeek V4.1-Flash the highest-placed open model at third.
The leading models like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, together on Mac, iPhone and iPad.
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Download Fello AIBest AI for Students
The best AI for students is GPT-5.6 Luna inside ChatGPT for general coursework and Gemini 3.6 Flash inside the Gemini app for STEM and multimodal study, with Qwen 3.7 Max as the API alternative for harder problem sets (200 free requests a day) and Claude Opus 5 as the alternative for essay editing. Most students don't need to pay, and the free tier improved on August 6: GPT-5.6 Luna became the default for ChatGPT Free and Go, with unlimited text chats and a Think button for harder questions, though file uploads and image tools stay capped. Gemini 3.6 Flash is still what the free Gemini app serves, Claude Sonnet 5 is the free Claude default, and DeepSeek V4 is free on DeepSeek's chat site. Luna is the cheapest member of the GPT-5.6 family rather than the strongest, so reach for the Think button or switch to GPT-5.5 when an essay needs more care. For step-by-step working on the hardest math, GPT-5.6 Sol is OpenAI's paid flagship and GPT-6 Astra now reports 97.6% on FrontierMath Tier 4 v2 against GPT-5.5 Pro's verified 39.6%, though Astra is not on ChatGPT's free tier; Qwen 3.7 Max is the value alternative at 97.1 HMMT 2026 February with API pricing at $1.25 / $3.75 on its current 50% promo ($2.50 / $7.50 list).
| Task | Best Model | Why | Free? | Alternative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Essays & coursework | GPT-5.6 Luna | Free default in ChatGPT since August 6; unlimited text chats | Yes | Claude Sonnet 5 (free Claude) |
| STEM problem-solving | GPT-5.6 Sol / Qwen 3.7 Max | Paid STEM flagship; Astra reports 97.6% FrontierMath Tier 4 v2 / 97.1 HMMT 2026 Feb | Pro paid / Qwen API paid | Gemini 3.6 Flash (free) |
| Research & accuracy | Gemini 3.1 Pro | 98% ARC-AGI-1 at $0.52/task, native Google Search grounding | Yes (Gemini app) | Claude Opus 5 |
| Writing editing | Claude Sonnet 5 | Free and default on claude.ai; Claude Fable 5 is the quality leader | Yes (Claude free) | Claude Fable 5 |
| Multimodal study (PDFs, slides, images) | Gemini 3.6 Flash | 1M context, free in Gemini app | Yes | NotebookLM (Google) |
The free tier is where this guide moved. On August 6 OpenAI made GPT-5.6 Luna the default for ChatGPT Free and Go and gave both unlimited text chats plus a Think button for harder questions, so the free pick is now Luna rather than GPT-5.5, which stays selectable when an essay needs more care. File uploads, images and other tools are still capped. Nothing moved on the Google side: Gemini 3.8 Flash shipped on September 2 but reaches free users only through AI Studio and the API, so the free Gemini app still serves 3.6 Flash and it keeps the multimodal row. GPT-6 Astra (September 3) is the one to watch for hard problem sets, reporting 97.6% on FrontierMath Tier 4 v2 against GPT-5.5 Pro's verified 39.6%, but it needs a paid ChatGPT plan and no free tier includes it.
Best AI for Work & Professionals
The best AI for professional work is GPT-5.6 (ChatGPT's default since July 9) for daily knowledge work, Claude Opus 5 for coding and high-stakes writing, and Gemini Spark for 24/7 agentic workflows. Most professionals get the most out of running two paid subscriptions (ChatGPT Plus at $20/month plus Claude Pro at $20/month, total $40/month), or consolidating with Fello AI at $9.99/month for all five top models in one Mac/iOS app. For agentic work that runs while you sleep, Gemini Spark is the only true 24/7 cloud agent, and since July 30 it reaches the $19.99/month Google AI Pro tier as well as Google AI Ultra.
| Use Case | Best Model | Key Stat | Price | Alternative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Daily knowledge work | GPT-5.6 | ChatGPT's default since July 9; the assistant most people can open | $20/mo ChatGPT Plus | Claude Opus 5 |
| Coding (proprietary) | Claude Opus 5.5 | #1 Terminal-Bench 4.0 (59.6%) and #1 on both LiveBench coding boards, at $4 / $20 | $20/mo Claude Pro | GPT-6 Astra, which keeps both Arena coding boards |
| Coding (cost-effective) | Qwen3.8-Max-0902 | #4 Code Arena: WebDev (1681), behind GPT-6 Astra, Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Opus 5; API-only on QwenCloud | $2 / $6 | Qwen 3.7 Max; DeepSeek V4.1-Flash |
| Research & briefings | Gemini 3.1 Pro | 98% ARC-AGI-1 at $0.52/task, Google grounding | Google AI Pro / Ultra | Claude Opus 5 |
| Hard math, physics, finance modelling | GPT-6 Astra | #1 LiveBench Reasoning and ARC-AGI-2 (95%); reports 97.6% FrontierMath Tier 4 v2 | $100/mo ChatGPT Pro | GPT-5.6 Sol; Qwen 3.7 Max |
| Always-on agent workflows | Gemini Spark | First 24/7 cloud agent | From $19.99/mo Google AI Pro | Claude Cowork |
| Live news, X-context creative | Grok 4.7 | Intelligence Index 46.3 + native X grounding; the Grok app still serves 4.6 | $30/mo SuperGrok | Gemini 3.1 Pro |
| All-in-one consolidation | Fello AI | ChatGPT + Claude + Gemini + Grok + DeepSeek | $9.99/mo | Pay each vendor separately |
Three launches landed in the first three days of September and a fourth on September 22, and the last one does change the price argument this block rests on. Claude Opus 5.5 tops Artificial Analysis's Intelligence Index at 57.6 on v4.3.2 and both of its agentic boards, and it does that at $4 / $20 against Claude Opus 5's $5 / $25. The reasoning this block used to carry, that teams should start with Opus 5 because it costs half what the better models cost, no longer applies: Opus 5.5 is both better and cheaper, so it takes the proprietary coding row and is the model we would build daily work on. GPT-5.6 keeps the daily-assistant row all the same, because that row is about reach rather than score and neither Opus 5.5 nor GPT-6 Astra is a default for hundreds of millions of people. Alibaba's Qwen3.8-Max-0902 (September 2) keeps the cost-effective coding row at $2 / $6, though it is API-only on QwenCloud with no consumer front-end.
AI Model Pricing in September 2026
From $0 free tiers to $199.99/month Google AI Ultra. The most consequential price on this table is Claude Opus 5.5 at $4 / $20, because on September 22 Anthropic shipped the highest-scoring model any independent evaluator has measured at a lower list price than the model it replaces: Claude Opus 5 is $5 / $25, and cache reads fall 60% to $0.20, with Anthropic's own figure putting a typical workload 40% cheaper than on Opus 5. That inverts the shape this section has had all year, in which the best model was also the most expensive. Claude Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra both list at $10 / $50 and both now score below it. Meta's Muse Spark 1.3 lists at $1.25 / $4.25, unchanged across three capability bumps since July, with a Contributor tier at $0.10 / $0.20 for anyone willing to let Meta train on their prompts, and Grok 4.6 and Grok 4.7 both list at $2 / $6, with the caveat that a prompt of 200,000 tokens or more re-bills the entire request at $4 / $12. Grok 4.7 is the clearest case on this page of a price that did not move while the cost did: the tokens cost the same, and an Intelligence Index task costs $2.73 against Grok 4.6's $1.86, because 4.7 emits roughly twice the output getting there. The cheap end has moved twice. DeepSeek raised both V4 models roughly fourfold on August 16, which cost V4-Flash the price-performance pick, then reversed most of it on September 10: V4-Flash was retired and V4.1-Flash took its place at $0.15 / $0.60 off-peak and $0.30 / $1.20 at peak. Among models you can buy by the token the pick stays with GLM 5.3 Flash, now at its plain $0.15 / $0.50 list since the launch promotion expired on September 9, because Artificial Analysis measures it at $0.25 an Intelligence Index task for a score of 41.8 against DeepSeek's $0.27 for 39.5. Off-peak the two are level on input and GLM is cheaper on output; at peak GLM wins both. One model beats them both on cost per task and it is four days old: Xiaomi's MiMo-V2.6-Pro runs an index task for $0.13 at a score of 46.3, under plain MIT, but you have to host 1.02 trillion parameters to get it. At the frontier the value pick is Meta's Muse Spark 1.3, at $1.60 an index task for 48.1. Among closed models GPT-5.6 Luna is the cheapest by the token at $0.20 / $1.20 after OpenAI's July 30 cut, and $0.18 an index task. For a deeper breakdown see our full AI Pricing Comparison Guide.
| Model | Input (per 1M) | Output (per 1M) | Context | Free Access? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-6 Astra | $10.00 | $50.00 | 1,050,000 (922,000 max input) | ChatGPT Business/Pro since September 4, Plus hours later; no free tier. API, AWS and Azure still to come |
| GPT-5.5 | $5.00 | $30.00 | 1M (400K in Codex) | ChatGPT Free; API paid |
| GPT-5.5 Pro | $30.00 | $180.00 | 1M | ChatGPT Pro from $100/mo ($200 higher-usage tier) |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | $4.00 | $20.00 | Not published | Live in ChatGPT, Codex & API (July 9) |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | $2.00 | $12.00 | Not published | Live in ChatGPT, Codex & API (July 9) |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | $0.20 | $1.20 | Not published | Live in ChatGPT, Codex & API (July 9) |
| Claude Opus 5.5 | $4.00 | $20.00 | 1M | Claude Pro/Max/Team; API paid; cache reads $0.20 |
| Claude Opus 5 | $5.00 | $25.00 | 1M | Claude Pro/Max default; API paid |
| Claude Opus 4.8 | $5.00 | $25.00 | 1M | Legacy model at Anthropic; Pro/Max/API |
| Claude Fable 5.1 | $10.00 | $50.00 | 1M | Cache reads $0.25; in Max/Team Premium (~50% of usage limits); Pro/Team Standard via credits. Mythos 5.1 bills identically, by invitation only |
| Claude Fable 5 | $10.00 | $50.00 | 1M | Permanent in Max/Team Premium (~50% of usage limits); Pro/Team Standard via credits |
| Claude Sonnet 5 | $2.00 | $10.00 | 1M | Claude Free & Pro default; API paid |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | $3.00 | $15.00 | 1M | API paid (superseded by Sonnet 5) |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro | $2.00 (≤200K) / $4.00 (>200K) | $12.00 (≤200K) / $18.00 (>200K) | 1M | Limited Gemini app; API paid |
| Gemini 3.8 Flash | $0.75 intro / $1.50 from Jan 1, 2027 | $3.75 intro / $7.50 from Jan 1, 2027 | 1M | AI Studio, Antigravity, Gemini Enterprise + paid API; in the Gemini app reported for AI Pro/Ultra |
| Gemini 3.7 Flash | $0.75 intro / $1.50 from Jan 1, 2027 | $3.75 intro / $7.50 from Jan 1, 2027 | 1M | AI Studio, Android Studio, Antigravity + paid API; in the Gemini app via Spark only (AI Pro/Ultra, excludes EEA/UK/CH/Nigeria) |
| Gemini 3.6 Flash | $0.75 intro / $1.50 from Jan 1, 2027 | $3.75 intro / $7.50 from Jan 1, 2027 | 1M | Free Gemini app default; AI Studio; free API tier + paid API |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | $0.30 | $2.50 | 1M | AI Studio; free API tier + paid API |
| Qwen3.8-Max-0902 | $2.00 ($0.17 explicit cache hit, $0.25 implicit) | $6.00 | 1M (128K output) | QwenCloud API only; no consumer chat front-end, no open weights |
| Qwen 3.7 Max | $1.25 promo / $2.50 list | $3.75 promo / $7.50 list | 1M | 200 free requests/day; API paid beyond that |
| MiniMax M3 | $0.30 (50% off $0.60) | $1.20 (≤512K) | 1M | Open weights; hosting costs apply |
| LongCat-2.0 | Provider-dependent | Provider-dependent | 1M | Open weights (MIT); hosting costs apply |
| NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra | Provider-dependent | Provider-dependent | 1M | Open weights (OpenMDW); hosting costs apply |
| Qwen 3.5 (open-weight) | Self-host / Together | Self-host / Together | 1M | Open weights; hosting costs apply |
| Nex-N2-Pro | Self-host / providers | Self-host / providers | 1M | Open weights (Apache 2.0); hosting costs apply |
| Rio 3.5 Open 397B | Self-host / providers | Self-host / providers | 1M | Open weights (MIT); hosting costs apply |
| Grok 4.3 | $1.25 | $2.50 | 1M | Free consumer plan; API paid |
| Grok 4.6 | $2.00 (<200K) / $4.00 (≥200K) | $6.00 (<200K) / $12.00 (≥200K) | 500K | SpaceXAI API, Cursor, Grok Build, OpenRouter, Vercel, Cloudflare |
| Grok 4.7 | $2.00 (<200K) / $4.00 (≥200K) | $6.00 (<200K) / $12.00 (≥200K) | 500K | SpaceXAI API, Cursor, Grok Build, harnesses and cloud routers; not in the Grok app |
| Muse Spark 1.3 | $1.25 ($0.10 Contributor tier) | $4.25 ($0.20 Contributor tier) | 1M | Paid API; Muse Code, Meta Model API and OpenRouter; Contributor tier trades training rights for a ~92% discount |
| Kimi K3 | $3.00 ($0.30 cache-hit) | $15.00 | 1M | Free basic tier in the Kimi app; open weights on Hugging Face (Kimi K3 License) |
| Gemini Omni Flash (video) | $1.50 | $17.50 (video output) | 10-second clips | Gemini app / Flow; AI Studio + API |
| DeepSeek V4-Pro | $0.66 off-peak / $1.32 peak ($0.022 cache-hit off-peak) | $1.98 off-peak / $3.96 peak | 1M | DeepSeek Chat free; API paid, peak/off-peak tiers since August 16 |
| DeepSeek V4.1-Flash | $0.15 off-peak / $0.30 peak ($0.003 cache-hit off-peak) | $0.60 off-peak / $1.20 peak | 1M | DeepSeek Chat free; API paid, peak/off-peak tiers; replaced V4-Flash on September 10 |
| Kimi K2.7 Code | Provider-dependent | Provider-dependent | 256K | Open weights; hosting costs apply |
| GLM-5.2 | Provider-dependent | Provider-dependent | 1M | Open weights; hosting costs apply |
| GLM 5.3 | $1.40 ($0.26 cache-hit) | $4.40 | 1M | Z.ai API, GLM Coding Plan and ZCode; weights on Hugging Face since August 28 under the bespoke GLM 5.3 License |
| GLM 5.3 Flash | $0.15 ($0.03 cache-hit); $0.075 promo | $0.50; $0.25 promo | 1M | Z.ai API, GLM Coding Plan, OpenRouter; MIT weights on Hugging Face; promo ends September 9 |
| Tencent Hy4 Preview | $0.834 ($0.042 cache-hit) | $2.501 | 1M+ | Open weights (Apache 2.0); Tencent Cloud TokenHub, OpenRouter, WorkBuddy, CodeBuddy |
| Qwen3.8-Flash-Next | Provider-dependent | Provider-dependent | 262K (to 1M) | Open weights (Qwen Community License 1.0); hosting costs apply |
| MiMo-V2.6-Pro | $0.435 | $0.87 | 1M | Open weights (MIT); hosting costs apply |
| ERNIE 5.1 | China-region pricing | China-region pricing | 256K | Baidu free tier |
| Gemini Spark (agent) | Not API-priced | Not API-priced | 1M (Gemini base) | Google AI Pro $19.99, AI Ultra $99.99 or $199.99/mo |
| Fello AI (aggregator) | Routed via app | Routed via app | Model-dependent | $9.99/mo, free tier available |
The GPT-5.5 and GPT-5.5 Pro rates above are short-context prices; OpenAI no longer publishes the specific long-context figures. The GPT-5.6 tiers are billed at 2x input and 1.5x output once a prompt passes 272K input tokens, which puts long-context Terra at $4 / $18 and Luna at $0.40 / $1.80. Grok 4.6 works the same way but bites harder: at 200,000 prompt tokens and above, SpaceXAI re-bills the entire request at the higher rate rather than only the overage, so crossing the line by a thousand tokens doubles the cost of the whole call. DeepSeek is the other rate card that needs reading twice: since August 16 both V4 models bill at peak rates from 01:00 to 04:00 and from 06:00 to 10:00 UTC on weekdays, and at exactly half that in every other hour, so the same job can cost twice as much depending on when you run it. If you want access to multiple AI models without managing separate subscriptions, Fello AI provides GPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity, and more in a single app for Mac, iPhone, and iPad from $9.99/month.
Best Open-Weight Models in September 2026
The best open-weight model in September 2026 is MiMo-V2.6-Pro, which Xiaomi published on September 21 under plain MIT: 1.02 trillion parameters with 42 billion active, a 1M-token context, and the weights on Hugging Face on the day. Artificial Analysis measures it at 46.3 on Intelligence Index v4.3.2, which is the highest open score it has ever published, above GLM-5.3 at 44.8 and Kimi K3 at 43.6, and it does that at $0.13 an Intelligence Index task, cheaper than any other model on this page. It also takes 34.8% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 and 1673 on GDPval-AA v2.1, which puts it above Kimi K3 on both. Two honest limits: no Arena board has rated it, so there is no human-preference evidence for it at all, and it was published four days ago, so it has no independent track record. Kimi K3 is still the highest-placed open model on Arena, fifth on WebDev at 1674 and fifth on the Agent Arena's task-completion signal, and GLM-5.3 is still the strongest open model on Artificial Analysis's Terminal-Bench 4.0 at 41.9% against MiMo's 34.8%, on a bespoke Z.ai licence rather than MIT. The practical recommendation for teams running their own weights is still GLM 5.3 Flash (Z.ai, MIT), released on August 26 and scoring 41.8 on v4.3.2, 320B total with 18B active, because a 1.02-trillion-parameter model is not a workstation proposition and the K3 download is 96 safetensors shards and about 1.56 TB. The cheap open tier changed again on September 10: DeepSeek retired V4-Flash 0731 and replaced it with DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash, 552B with 8B active at prefill and 16B at decode, natively multimodal, MIT on the day, scoring 39.5 on v4.3.2 against 34.3 for the build it replaces, and priced back down to $0.15 / $0.60 off-peak. It is also third on the Agent Arena's task-completion signal, the highest-placed open model there. Of the three releases that closed August, GLM 5.3 published its weights on August 28 under a bespoke licence with a clause requiring any model-as-a-service operator above $10 billion in revenue to pass a Z.ai security review first; Alibaba's Qwen3.8-Flash-Next, a 125B mixture-of-experts with only 6B active that previews the Qwen4 architecture, scores 39.8 and sits ninth on Arena's WebDev board; and Tencent's Hy4 Preview, 770B total and 49B active under Apache 2.0, has no Artificial Analysis rating but sits eleventh on Arena WebDev at 1624. Note also that GLM 5.3 Flash is not a trimmed GLM 5.3 but a separate model on a newly trained base, which is why it could ship under plain MIT while the flagship could not.
| Model | Best For | Key Benchmark | Context / License | Where To Run |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MiMo-V2.6-Pro | Highest open Intelligence Index ever measured | II 46.3 (v4.3.2), above GLM-5.3 and Kimi K3, at $0.13 an index task; 34.8% Terminal-Bench 4.0; GDPval-AA v2.1 1673; 1.02T/42B active | 1M / MIT | Hugging Face (XiaomiMiMo), providers, self-host |
| Kimi K3 | Highest-placed open model on Arena | II 43.6 (v4.3.2); #5 Arena WebDev, the best open placement there; #5 Agent Arena; 2.8T/104B active | 1M / Kimi K3 License | Hugging Face (96 shards, 1.56 TB), Moonshot API, providers |
| GLM 5.3 Flash | Best open model most teams can actually run | II 41.8 (v4.3.2), on the intelligence-versus-cost Pareto frontier at about $0.25 an index task; 320B/18B active, natively multimodal | 1M / MIT | Hugging Face, Z.ai API ($0.15/$0.50), OpenRouter |
| GLM-5.2 | Fallback with an independent track record | II 33.7 (v4.3.2); #19 Arena WebDev (1,591.8), #17 Agent Arena; 744B/40B active | 1M / MIT | Z.ai, Hugging Face, OpenRouter |
| GLM 5.3 | Open since August 28, but on a bespoke licence | II 44.8 (v4.3.2), the second-highest open score we found; same 744B base as GLM-5.2, post-trained only, published checkpoint counted at 753B; CyberGym 84.5% and Terminal-Bench 3.0 28.3 (vendor figures) | 1M / GLM 5.3 License (MaaS above $10B revenue needs a Z.ai security review) | Hugging Face, Z.ai API ($1.40/$4.40), GLM Coding Plan, ZCode |
| DeepSeek V4.1-Flash | Best open value if you host it yourself | II 39.5 (v4.3.2) against 34.3 for the V4-Flash 0731 build it replaces; 552B, 8B active at prefill and 16B at decode | 1M / MIT | DeepSeek API ($0.15/$0.60 off-peak, $0.30/$1.20 peak since September 10), local |
| Tencent Hy4 Preview | Largest permissively licensed model yet | 770B/49B active; 2.99/4.00 on Tencent's own 203-task expert panel vs Kimi K3 2.94 and GLM 5.3 2.92 (vendor); no Artificial Analysis rating; #11 Arena WebDev (1624) | 1M+ / Apache 2.0 | Hugging Face (BF16 and FP8), Tencent Cloud TokenHub, OpenRouter |
| Qwen3.8-Flash-Next | Preview of the Qwen4 architecture | 125B total plus a 51B N-gram embedding, 6B active; 91.7 GPQA Diamond and 62.5 SWE-Bench Pro (vendor); II 39.8 (v4.3.2); #9 Arena WebDev (1635) | 262K to 1M / Qwen Community License 1.0 | Hugging Face, providers, self-host |
| LongCat-2.0 | Frontier open coder trained on Chinese chips | II 33 (v4.1); 59.5% SWE-Bench Pro (vendor), 1.6T/~48B active | 1M / MIT | Hugging Face, GitHub, OpenRouter |
| MiniMax M3 | Cheap frontier-class multimodal | II 44 (v4.1), 59% SWE-Bench Pro, multimodal | 1M / license TBD | Hugging Face, API $0.30/1M (50% off) |
| Nex-N2-Pro | Strongest open coding score | II 41 (v4.1); 80.8 SWE-Bench Verified, 397B/17B active | Qwen-based / Apache 2.0 | Hugging Face, providers, self-host |
| Kimi K2.7 Code | Strongest commercially-licensed open coder | +21.8% on Kimi Code Bench v2 vs K2.6 (vendor); 1T/32B active | 256K / Modified MIT | Hugging Face, DeepInfra, providers |
| DeepSeek V4-Pro | Agentic real-world work | II 44 (v4.1), 1.6T/49B active | 1M / MIT | DeepSeek API ($0.66/$1.98 off-peak, $1.32/$3.96 peak since August 16), local |
| Hy3 | Newest permissive-licence entrant | II 41 (v4.1); #22 on Arena WebDev (1,516.4) | Apache 2.0 | Hugging Face, providers, self-host |
| Inkling | Thinking Machines' first open model | II 41 (v4.1), agentic 32.3, released July 15 | Open weights | Hugging Face, providers, self-host |
| Inkling Small | Same family at a quarter the size | II 40 (v4.1), agentic 30.8; 276B/12B active, text, image and audio in | Apache 2.0 | Hugging Face (BF16 and NVFP4), providers, self-host |
| NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra | NVIDIA-tuned, fully permissive license | II 38 (v4.1), 65-70.4 SWE-Bench Verified, 550B/55B active | 1M / OpenMDW | OpenRouter, Hugging Face, AWS (8x B200 self-host) |
| Qwen 3.5 (397B / 17B active) | Multimodal, fast decode | 88.4 GPQA, 91.3 AIME 2026, 83.6 LiveCodeBench v6 | 1M / open | Together, OpenRouter, local |
| Qwen3.6-35B-A3B | Efficient open agentic coder (3B active) | 86.0 GPQA Diamond, 92.7 AIME 2026, 35B/3B active | 262K (to 1M YaRN) / Apache 2.0 | Hugging Face, OpenRouter, local |
| Qwen3.6-27B | Laptop-runnable dense coder | 87.8 GPQA Diamond, dense 27B, multimodal | 256K / Apache 2.0 | Local Mac/PC, Hugging Face, OpenRouter |
| Rio 3.5 Open 397B | Qwen 3.5 fine-tune, multilingual reasoning | 70.8 Terminal-Bench 2.1 (first-party), beats Qwen 3.7 Plus on 4/5 | 397B/17B active / MIT | Hugging Face, providers, self-host |
| Llama 4 Maverick | Meta-line flagship | 17B active / 400B total params | Llama 4 license | Meta cloud, Hugging Face, local |
| NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano Omni | Edge / low-power | Multimodal, very small footprint | Compact / open | Local, NVIDIA tool |
Licensing matters as much as raw score here, and August widened the gap between the two groups. Kimi K2.7 (Modified MIT), DeepSeek V4 (MIT), GLM 5.3 Flash (MIT), MiMo-V2.6-Pro (MIT), GLM-5.2 (MIT), LongCat-2.0 (MIT), Hy3 (Apache 2.0), Hy4 Preview (Apache 2.0), Nex-N2-Pro (Apache 2.0) and Nemotron 3 Ultra (OpenMDW) all clearly allow commercial use with no revenue test. The rest carry conditions worth reading before you build on them: MiniMax M3 and MiniMax H3 ship under their own community licences, H3 additionally requiring an application from the US, EU, UK and South Korea; Kimi K3 sits on a custom licence with a revenue threshold for anyone reselling it as a service; GLM 5.3 requires a Z.ai security review of any model-as-a-service operator above $10 billion in revenue; and the Qwen Community License 1.0 on Qwen3.8-Flash-Next requires a separate licence from Qwen to run a model-as-a-service or an AI work-assistant business, though internal use is exempt. No open model is first on any Arena board we track any more: Claude Opus 5 took the Agent board in July, the last one an open model led.
Benchmarks, Prices, and Hands-On Use
Every ranking on this page combines three inputs: public benchmarks from seven independent houses (Artificial Analysis, Arena formerly LMArena, Scale SEAL, LiveBench, EQ-Bench, ARC Prize and the official Terminal-Bench 4.0 board, covering the Intelligence Index, GPQA Diamond, ARC-AGI-1 through 3, Humanity's Last Exam, GDPval-AA, FrontierMath, HMMT, MCP Atlas, SWE Atlas and the Remote Labor Index), published API and subscription pricing from each vendor's official pricing page, and hands-on use by the FelloAI editorial team running real prompts across the same task on every model. We re-fetch official pricing and benchmark sources before every monthly update.
Benchmarks are weighted to the use case: SWE-bench and Terminal-Bench drive coding, GPQA Diamond and ARC-AGI-2 drive accuracy, GDPval-AA (Artificial Analysis's professional-deliverables benchmark) informs professional-task quality while writing style is judged primarily by hands-on testing, FrontierMath and HMMT drive problem-solving. We disclose when a benchmark is vendor-reported but not independently verified, and we strip any claim we cannot reproduce against a live source. We rank on measured scores: a category crown moves as soon as a model out-scores the holder on the boards that define that category, without waiting for the vote-based boards to catch up, and a model that is not yet widely available is flagged on its card rather than denied one. We re-check ranks as well as figures, because a score can stay correct while the board around it moves. When a model goes through a major upgrade between updates, we re-rank the category and add a "What changed this month" line at the bottom of the deep-dive.
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