Best LLMs, ranked
Match · Updated July 2026
The smartest LLM right now is Claude Opus 5 (60.7 intelligence), and the cheapest is Ling-2.6-flash at $0.010 per million input tokens. Browse every ranking below, or narrow any of them to a single maker.
By metric & use case
Small & Fast LLMs
Cheap, fast, efficient tier
Best Local LLMs
Runs on your own hardware
Smartest LLMs
Highest intelligence index
Best LLMs for Coding
Best at real software tasks
Best LLMs for Design & Frontend
Best UI & frontend output
Fastest LLMs
Most tokens per second
Lowest-Latency LLMs
Fastest to first token
Cheapest LLMs
Lowest price per token
Best Free LLMs
Capable at zero cost
Best Reasoning LLMs
Deepest step-by-step thinking
Best Vision LLMs
Reads images & documents
Best LLMs for Agents
Best at tool use & planning
Best Open-Source LLMs
Self-hostable open weights
Longest-Context LLMs
Largest context window
Best LLMs for Writing
Best long-form & creative text
Best LLMs for Math & Science
Top GPQA science scores
Best LLMs for RAG
Built for retrieval pipelines
Best LLMs for SQL & Data Analysis
Reliable SQL & structured output
Best LLMs for Roleplay
Long-context, unmoderated chat
Best Uncensored LLMs
No provider moderation layer
Popular maker rankings
Cheapest OpenAI Models
#1 GPT-5 Nano (batch) · $0.025
Best Anthropic Models for Coding
#1 Claude Opus 5 · 78.0
Smartest Google Models
#1 Gemini 3.5 Flash · 50.2
Cheapest Google Models
#1 Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite (batch) · $0.050
Best DeepSeek Reasoning Models
#1 DeepSeek V4 Pro · 44.3
Best OpenAI Models for Coding
#1 GPT-5.6 Sol · 77.4
Cheapest Anthropic Models
#1 Claude 3 Haiku · $0.250
Smartest OpenAI Models
#1 GPT-5.6 Sol · 58.9
