Closed / API Frontier
Leading Proprietary Models
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o3 / o3-proSOTA ReasoningOpenAI
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Claude 4 Opus / SonnetCoding & SafetyAnthropic
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Gemini 2.5 Pro / UltraMultimodalGoogle DeepMind
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Grok 3 / Grok 4 previewReal-time X integrationxAI
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DeepSeek-R1 / DeepSeek-V4Cost-performanceDeepSeek
Open-Weight Leaders
Best Open Models (March 2026)
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DeepSeek-R1 671B / 336BTop open modelDeepSeek
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Qwen 3 235B / 72B / 32BVery strongAlibaba
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Llama 4 Maverick / ScoutLong contextMeta
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Mistral Large 2 123B / Nemo 12BFast inferenceMistral AI
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Phi-5 / Phi-5-miniSmall & strongMicrosoft
Reasoning & Agents
Advanced Reasoning Systems
- OpenAI o3 / o3-mini — thinking budget control
- Claude 4 with extended thinking — best coding agent
- DeepSeek-R1 with self-verification — math & logic leader
- xAI Grok 3 agents — real-world tool use
- Gemini 2.5 Flash Thinking — fast + deep
- Aflow / OpenHands / Devin 2 — autonomous agents