- What is the best LLM in 2026?
- Claude Fable 5 leads the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at 59.9 (July 2026), followed by Claude Opus 4.8 (II 55.7), GPT-5.5 (II 54.8), Gemini 3 Pro Preview, and GPT-5.4. Use the live calculator above to compare pricing, benchmark scores (GPQA, AIME, HLE, MMLU-Pro, SWE-bench), and tokens-per-second speed side-by-side.
- What is the cheapest LLM API in 2026?
- Cheapest by blended $/M tokens (input + output at typical 3:1 ratio): the open-source tier (DeepSeek, Qwen, Mistral, gpt-oss) ranges from $0.05–$0.30/M blended. Budget proprietary options like Gemini 3 Flash-Lite and Claude Haiku 4.5 sit around $0.40–$0.80/M blended. Top-tier models (Claude Fable 5, GPT-5.5) run $3–$15/M blended. The Cheapest AI Models list above updates hourly from Artificial Analysis.
- Claude vs GPT vs Gemini — which is cheapest?
- On a blended 3:1 input:output ratio in July 2026: Gemini 3 Pro Preview ($2/$12 per 1M) is the cheapest top-tier option; GPT-5.4 ($2.50/$15) is mid; Claude Opus 4.8 ($15/$75) is the most expensive. Claude Fable 5 (premium tier) trails GPT-5.5 ($5/$25) on output cost. For pure coding workloads, see the coding plans comparison page.
- What is the best LLM for coding in 2026?
- Claude Fable 5 tops the Artificial Analysis Coding Index at 76.5, followed by GPT-5.5 (xhigh) at 74.9, Claude Opus 4.8 at 74.3, and Claude Sonnet 4.6 at 70+. For budget coding, DeepSeek V3.2 Speciale and Qwen3.6-Max both score above 70 at 1/10 the price. See the live /best-for/coding page for the current top 20 ranked by SWE-bench, LiveCodeBench, and Coding Index.