The 2026 LLM Landscape: Every Major Model, Compared

There were roughly 255 model releases in Q1 2026 alone — about three a day. As of June 2026, the frontier has fractured: there is no single best model, only a best model for your task. This guide compares every major family by benchmark, price, context window and license — and is built to be the source you can quote.

Updated October 12, 2026: the master table, charts and family notes below are the June 2026 baseline. The newest models — Claude Opus 5.5, GPT-6, Gemini 4 Argon, Grok 4.7, GLM-5.3, DeepSeek V4.1-Flash, MiMo-V2.6-Pro and Mistral Large 4 — are in the October 2026 update near the end.

How to read this: all figures are a June 2026 snapshot. Vendor-reported numbers are marked *; everything else comes from official docs or independent trackers (see Sources). Prices are per 1M tokens (input / output).

Key Takeaways

• No model wins everything. Claude Opus 4.8 leads overall intelligence and agentic coding; GPT-5.5 leads terminal/CLI agents; Gemini 3.1 Pro leads value + multimodal reasoning.
• The top is tight. On the Artificial Analysis (AA) Intelligence Index: Opus 4.8 (61.4) → GPT-5.5 (60.2) → Gemini 3.1 Pro (57) → Grok 4.3 (53) — within ~8 points.
• Open weights caught up. DeepSeek V4-Pro and MiniMax M3 (AA Index ~44) post near-frontier coding scores at 5–12× lower price.
• Context exploded. Llama 4 Scout holds the largest publicly released window at 10M tokens; 1M is now the default.

How This Was Compiled

We tracked every actively marketed flagship per lab as of June 17, 2026, then cross-checked specs against official model cards / pricing pages and independent trackers (Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.1, LLM-Stats). Where sources disagree — common in this market — we give the range and cite both. Treat every number as a dated snapshot, not a permanent fact.

The Master Table

Closed / proprietary frontier

Open-weight / open-source

Intelligence: the frontier is a cluster

Prefer a static version? Download the chart: AA Intelligence Index (PNG).

Context windows: 1M is the new default

Static version: Context windows (PNG).

Price: open weights reset the floor

Static version: Output price (PNG).

By Family

OpenAI — GPT

GPT-5.5 (Apr 23, 2026) unified the o-series + Codex into one flagship. It leads terminal-native agents (Terminal-Bench 2.0 ≈ 82.7%), is natively omnimodal, and ships an Instant default plus a higher-accuracy Pro. Pricing $5/$30; context 400K (Codex) to 1M (API). Lineage: GPT-5 (Aug 2025) → 5.1 → 5.2 → 5.4 → 5.5.

Anthropic — Claude

Opus 4.8 (May 28, 2026) is the June overall leader (AA 61.4): top agentic coding (SWE-V 88.6%), computer use (OSWorld 83.4%), knowledge work (GDPval-AA 1,890), best hallucination calibration, plus a Fast Mode. Tiers: Opus 4.8 ($5/$25) · Sonnet 4.6 ($3/$15) · Haiku 4.5 ($1/$5). The Mythos-class Fable 5 (Jun 9) set a coding ceiling (SWE-Pro 80.3%*) but its availability is currently restricted.

Google — Gemini

Gemini 3.1 Pro (Feb 2026, AA 57) is the value + multimodal leader (~$2 input, 1M ctx, GPQA ≈ 94.3%). 3.5 Flash (May 19, GA) is the fastest/cheapest tier yet ($1.50/$9, ~4× faster). 3.5 Pro (Deep Think, up to 2M ctx) is rolling out in June.

xAI — Grok

Grok 4.3 (Apr 30, 2026, AA 53): budget frontier — 1M context, function calling, structured outputs, $1.25/$2.50. Strongest features sit behind the $300/mo SuperGrok Heavy tier.

Meta — Llama + Muse

Llama 4 Scout (10M ctx) and Maverick (1M ctx) are MoE, natively multimodal, single-host friendly. Behemoth (~2T) was shelved. The Muse family now has three models: Muse Spark 1.2 (Aug 5, coding flagship, AA 54, $1.25/$4.25), Muse Glimmer (Aug 10, 30B Apache 2.0 for local agents), and the original Muse Spark (Apr 8, AA 52). Llama 5 slipped toward 2027.

DeepSeek (open weight, MIT)

V4 (Apr 24, 2026) made 1M context cheap. V4-Pro (1.6T/49B active) posts ~85% SWE-V; V4-Flash is the cheapest credible coder ($0.14/$0.28). R2 has not shipped — treat R2 specs as rumor.

Alibaba — Qwen

Qwen3.7-Max (May 19) is proprietary, API-only (1M ctx, $2.50/$7.50): the “Agent Frontier” with the highest knowledge scores in its peer set. Open weights continue lower: Qwen3.6-27B / 35B-A3B (Apache 2.0).

Chinese open-source wave

• Kimi K2.7 Code (Jun 12): 1T MoE, 256K ctx, leads MCP tool use (81.1%).
• GLM-5.2 (Jun 13): 1M ctx (largest open), MIT pending, ~$1.40/$4.40.
• MiniMax M3 (Jun 1): 1M ctx, native image/video, $0.30/$1.20, top open AA Index.

NVIDIA — Nemotron

Nemotron 3 Ultra (Jun 4): 550B, the most capable open model under a fully permissive license (no thresholds). Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (Aug 11): highest-efficiency model for long-running agentic workloads, ships with NeMo Switchyard multi-model routing library.

Mistral — Europe’s open standard

Mistral Large 3 (Dec 2, 2025): 41B active / 675B total MoE, 256K ctx, native vision, Apache 2.0 ($0.50/$1.50), shipped with edge-focused Ministral 3.

FAQ

What is the best LLM in June 2026? There is no single winner. Claude Opus 4.8 leads overall intelligence and agentic coding; GPT-5.5 leads terminal/CLI agents; Gemini 3.1 Pro leads value and multimodal reasoning; DeepSeek V4-Pro leads value-per-benchmark among open weights.

What is the best open-source LLM? MiniMax M3 and DeepSeek V4-Pro tie at the top of the AA Index among open weights (~44). Kimi K2.7 Code leads MCP tool use; Llama 4 Scout leads context length (10M); NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra leads on permissive licensing.

Which model has the largest context window? Llama 4 Scout, at 10M tokens — the largest of any publicly released LLM as of June 2026.

What is the cheapest capable model? DeepSeek V4-Flash at $0.14 / $0.28 per 1M tokens, with a verified ~79% SWE-bench Verified score.

July 2026 Update

The landscape moved fast in July. Here’s what changed since the initial June snapshot:

New frontier models

New open-weight models

Updated takeaways

• Claude Opus 5 is the new overall leader, displacing Opus 4.8 at the same price. The gap to Fable 5 on SWE-bench Pro is now ~1 point (79.2% vs 80.3%).
• GPT-5.6 tiered pricing is live. Terra matches GPT-5.5 quality at half the price; Luna is the cheapest GPT-5.x at $1/$6.
• The open-weight ceiling jumped to 2.8T with Kimi K3, but the custom license and 64+ GPU requirement limit practical adoption. Inkling offers a US-origin Apache 2.0 alternative at 975B.
• Gemini 3.5 Pro is still missing. Google shipped 3.6 Flash instead. Pre-training for Gemini 4 has begun.

August 2026 Update

Early August brought a Chinese-model offensive and a video-generation surge; the week of August 5–11 added a Meta open-source pivot, NVIDIA’s agentic play, and significant GPT-5.6 updates:

New frontier models

New open-weight models

GPT-5.6 mid-August updates

GPT-5.6 received three significant changes:

• Sol — improved reasoning slider for granular compute allocation; now responds to “think more/less” in natural language.
• Luna — promoted to free default for all ChatGPT users (unlimited text, 25 image gens/day); added “Think” button for on-demand extended reasoning.
• GPT-5.6-Cyber — new security-hardened variant fine-tuned on adversarial datasets; 95% detection rate on prompt injection benchmarks. Available via API at Sol pricing.

Cross-modal expansion

The LLM landscape is increasingly entangled with video and multimodal models:

Updated takeaways

• Meta pivots to open source. Muse Glimmer (Apache 2.0) is Meta’s first fully permissive model — a strategic reversal after Llama’s restrictive community license. Muse Spark 1.2 (open weights announced) will follow. The Contributor tier ($0.10/$0.20 for frontier inference in exchange for training data) is a novel pricing model worth watching.
• Qwen 3.8-Max open weights arrive August 12. ModelScope shows a countdown. Combined with Kimi K3 (2.8T, July), the open-weight frontier is in a sprint. A 27B variant (Qwen3.8-27B) follows shortly after.
• Local agentic models are now a category. Muse Glimmer (30B, 24GB VRAM) and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (NeMo Switchyard routing) both target always-on agents that run on local or enterprise hardware — a category that didn’t exist three months ago.
• GPT-5.6 gets wider, not taller. OpenAI is expanding horizontally (Luna free for all, Cyber for security) rather than pushing a new number. The reasoning slider on Sol and the Think button on Luna both address the “how much compute” question differently than any rival.
• Video input is the new frontier. Wan 3.0’s document-to-video and MAGI-2’s permissive video generation join FLUX 3 and MiniMax H3 — four new video models in one week, eclipsing text-to-image as the hot modality.
• The frontier pricing ladder is clearer: Fable 5 ($10/$50) for max capability → Opus 5 ($5/$25) for near-Fable at half price → Qwen 3.8-Max ($2/$6) for agentic workloads on a budget → Muse Spark 1.2 ($1.25/$4.25) for coding-focused value → Sonnet 5 ($2/$10) for workhorse tasks.

October 2026 Update

Between mid-August and October 12, the landscape reset again: Anthropic shipped its 5.5 generation, OpenAI launched GPT-6, Google answered with Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 4 Argon, and Chinese labs released open-weight models almost weekly. The numbers below are vendor-reported unless noted; different vendors use different harnesses.

New closed models

New open-weight models

See the China open-weights roundup for how the Chinese releases fit together.

Updated takeaways

• The closed frontier now has two price tiers. $10/$50 buys Fable 5.1 or GPT-6 Astra; $2/$10 buys Sonnet 5.5 or GPT-6.1 Sol (Grok 4.7 is $2/$6 and Argon’s introductory price is $2/$10); Opus 5.5 sits between at $4/$20. On the benchmarks vendors publish, the cheaper tier closes most of the gap.
• Opus 5.5 is the new Anthropic default. Anthropic’s own table has it ahead of Fable 5.1 on every row it shows, and Anthropic says to start there. Fable 5.1 is the specialist for the longest runs.
• Cached reads became the price lever. Sonnet 5.5 ($0.10), GPT-6.1 Sol ($0.10), Fable 5.1 ($0.25) and Opus 5.5 ($0.20) all cut cache prices, and cache hits dominate agent bills.
• Open weights moved to MIT and to $0.15. Four of the six Chinese releases between August 12 and September 22 are MIT or MIT-style, and the Flash tier starts at $0.15 per million input tokens. Closed models still lead the hardest terminal benchmarks.
• Gemini 4 is announced but gated. Argon’s numbers are strong on Google’s table (DeepSWE v1.1 77.9%), but it is limited to trusted defenders for now.
• Qwen 4 is in training. At Apsara on September 22, Alibaba said Qwen 4 is in training and that Qwen 4.5 and Qwen 5 will reach 5 to 10 trillion parameters. No dates or specs yet.
• Benchmarks are version-fragile. Terminal-Bench 2.1 scores in the high 80s and 90s coexist with Terminal-Bench 4.0 scores of 30 to 70; the same model can score very differently across vendors’ harnesses. Compare within a vendor’s table, or test on your own workload.

Sources

1. Anthropic — Claude models overview
2. OpenAI — Introducing GPT-5.5
3. Google — Gemini 3.5
4. xAI — Grok 4.3 docs
5. Meta — Llama 4 herd
6. DeepSeek — V4 release notes
7. Alibaba Cloud — Qwen3.7: The Agent Frontier
8. Mistral AI — Introducing Mistral 3
9. Artificial Analysis — Intelligence Index
10. Build Fast with AI — Best AI Models June 2026
11. Alibaba Cloud — Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork
12. Anthropic — Introducing Claude Opus 5.5 and Claude Sonnet 5.5
13. OpenAI — GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol
14. Google — Gemini 4 Argon
15. Z.ai — GLM-5.3; DeepSeek — V4.1-Flash; Xiaomi MiMo — MiMo-V2.6
16. Mistral AI — Introducing Mistral Large 4

Changelog: 2026-10-12 — October update: added Fable 5.1, Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5, Haiku 5.5, GPT-6 family, Gemini 3.8 Flash and 4 Argon, Grok 4.7, Qwen3.8 open weights and Flash models, GLM-5.3 family, DeepSeek V4.1-Flash, MiMo-V2.6-Pro, Mistral Large 4. 2026-08-11 — August update 2: added Muse Spark 1.2, Muse Glimmer, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning; GPT-5.6 Sol/Luna/Cyber mid-August updates; Qwen 3.8-Max open-weight countdown; Grok Imagine Image 2.0, Wan 3.0, MAGI-2 to cross-modal expansion; updated Meta and Nemotron family sections. 2026-08-05 — August update: added Qwen 3.8-Max, cross-modal expansion section (MiniMax H3, FLUX 3 Video GA, Grok Imagine Video 1.5, SeedRealtime). 2026-07-29 — July update: added Opus 5, GPT-5.6 GA, Grok 4.5, Gemini 3.6 Flash, Kimi K3, Inkling. 2026-06-17 — initial publication.

Last updated: 2026-10-12