Most-Compared AI Models (August 2026)

Real-time head-to-head comparisons of the AI models developers actually pick between — pricing per 1M tokens, 12 benchmarks (GPQA, AIME, HLE, MMLU-Pro, LiveCodeBench, SWE-bench), and tokens/second speed. Updated hourly from Artificial Analysis.

1. Claude Opus 4.6 (Non-reasoning, High Effort) vs GPT-5.4 (xhigh)$10.00/M · $5.63/M
2. Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Non-reasoning, High Effort) vs GPT-5.4 (xhigh)$6.00/M · $5.63/M
3. GPT-5.4 (xhigh) vs Gemini 3 Pro Preview (high)$5.63/M · $4.50/M
4. Claude Opus 4.6 (Non-reasoning, High Effort) vs Gemini 3 Pro Preview (high)$10.00/M · $4.50/M
5. DeepSeek V3.2 (Non-reasoning) vs GPT-5.4 (xhigh)$0.32/M · $5.63/M
6. DeepSeek R1 0528 (May '25) vs Claude Opus 4.6 (Non-reasoning, High Effort)$1.76/M · $10.00/M

Cheapest AI Models by API Price (blended $/M tokens)

1. Devstral 2$0.00/M · Mistral
2. North Mini Code$0.00/M · Cohere
3. Gemma 3 4B Instruct$0.00/M · Google
4. Gemma 3 27B Instruct$0.00/M · Google
5. Phi-4 Multimodal Instruct$0.00/M · Microsoft

Frequently Asked Questions — AI Model Comparison (August 2026)

What is the best LLM in 2026?

Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) leads the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at 60.7 (August 2026), followed by Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh, II 60.1), Claude Fable 5 (II 59.9, HLE #1 53.3%), GPT-5.6 Sol max (II 58.9), and GPT-5.6 Sol xhigh (II 57.7). 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 August 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?

GPT-5.6 Sol (xhigh) tops the Artificial Analysis Coding Index at 78.3 (August 2026), followed by GPT-5.6 Sol (max) at 77.4, GPT-5.6 Sol (high) at 77.2, and Claude Fable 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) at 76.5. 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.