タグ: LLMs

On July 8, 2026, xAI released Grok 4.5, its first model built specifically for coding and agentic work. This is not a general capability upgrade. It is a deliberate pivot toward developers, with training done using real Cursor developer session data and benchmarks designed to measure what an AI can actually do inside a real codebase over a long session. The result is a model that scores 56 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, ahead of every Gemini model, at a fraction of what the current frontier costs to run. Artificial Analysis spent $0.36 putting Grok 4.5 through the index, against $1.23 for GPT-5.6 Sol and $2.34 for Claude Opus […]

Yes, Perplexity AI is free. You can use it at perplexity.ai with no credit card and no account needed for basic searches, and Perplexity runs a permanent free tier rather than a short trial. The free plan gives you unlimited quick searches with real source citations, which already puts it ahead of a plain chatbot. The catch is the ceiling on the advanced tools. The real question is not whether Perplexity is free, but whether the free tier is enough for what you do. This guide covers exactly what the free plan includes, the daily Pro Search limit and how it works, which AI models you actually get, why Perplexity […]

Yes, Grok AI is free. You can use it at grok.com or inside X with no credit card and no subscription, and xAI has kept a real free tier rather than a short trial. The catch is the ceiling, and it is not the one most guides quote. xAI does not publish a free-tier number, and the widely repeated 10 prompts every 2 hours figure comes from a limit system it retired in June 2026. What is confirmed is that the free plan runs a lighter model with no image generation and no access to the flagship. So the real question is not whether Grok is free, but whether the […]

GLM-5.2 is the top open-weight model on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, scoring 51 while costing a fraction of the closed flagships, and that gap is why the GLM vs Claude question has spread into a much bigger fight. Zhipu AI’s open-weight model costs $1.40 input / $4.40 output per million tokens against Claude Opus 5 at $5 / $25, ships under a permissive MIT license, and now trades benchmark wins with models from OpenAI, Google, xAI and DeepSeek. So the real question is not just GLM vs Claude. It is whether an open-weight model at a fraction of the cost can stand in for any of the big paid […]

Claude Code is free to install but not free to run. The command-line tool itself is free and open-source, so downloading it costs nothing, but every task it performs calls a Claude model, and that usage is what you pay for. You can cover it with a paid Claude Pro or Max plan, with pay-per-token API credits, or with one of several genuine free workarounds, and which model answers by default now depends on your plan: Claude Sonnet 5 on Pro, Claude Opus 5 on Max and the API. So the honest answer to “is Claude Code free or paid” is “both, depending on how you run it.” This guide […]

As of August 2026, DeepSeek R2 still has not launched, and DeepSeek has never confirmed a release date. The company that shook the AI world with R1 in early 2025 spent 2026 shipping something else entirely, the DeepSeek V4 series, and on 31 July 2026 it shipped the official DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 build with what its own model card calls substantially enhanced agentic capabilities. Its next dedicated reasoning model stayed locked behind closed doors. Reports point to founder Liang Wenfeng holding R2 back because he was not satisfied with its performance. This page tracks exactly where DeepSeek R2 stands right now, what has actually shipped versus what is still rumor, and the […]

GLM 5.5 is reportedly expected in August 2026, according to a June 30 report from CGTN on Zhipu AI. That would make it the direct successor to GLM-5.2, the open-weight model that shipped on June 13 and immediately became the highest-scoring open-source model on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index with a score of 51. Zhipu has not published an official launch date, so August is a strong signal rather than a locked promise. This article pulls together every credible signal on GLM 5.5 in one place. You will get the reported timing, the release cadence that backs it up, a clear-eyed view of what the specs and price are likely […]

Yes, Claude AI is free. You can sign up at claude.ai with no credit card and start chatting straight away, and as of July 1, 2026 the free plan runs Claude Sonnet 5, Anthropic’s newest default model. The free tier gives you roughly 15 to 40 messages every 5 hours, plus web search, file uploads, Projects, and Artifacts at no cost. So the real question is not whether Claude is free, but whether the free plan is enough for you. This guide covers exactly what the free tier includes, the message limits and how they reset, which Claude model you actually get, and when it makes sense to pay. If […]

GLM pricing is the headline reason developers keep switching to Zhipu AI’s models. The flagship GLM-5.2 costs just $1.40 per million input tokens and $4.40 per million output on the official API, roughly one-sixth of what GPT-5.5 charges, and the older GLM-4.7 is cheaper still. You can also use GLM free in the browser, and two of the models cost nothing at all through the API. This guide breaks down every way you pay for GLM in 2026: the free tier, the per-token API rates for each model, and the GLM Coding Plan subscription that starts at $18 a month. We finish with a cost comparison against Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini […]

On June 30, 2026, Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 5, the newest version of its balanced mid tier model and the most agentic Sonnet the company has ever shipped. It is the direct successor to Sonnet 4.6, and it landed with one clear pitch, which was near Opus 4.8 quality at a fraction of the cost. The headline is not a benchmark. It is the price. Sonnet 5 launches with introductory pricing of $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, cheaper than Opus 4.8, cheaper than OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, and cheaper than Google’s Gemini 3.1 Pro. For teams running agents at scale, where the same job can burn […]