Claude Fable 5 is the strongest alternative to Grok 4.6 — it scores 100 vs 88 on research at $10/1M input (Grok 4.6 costs $2/1M). Gemini 3.6 Flash is the budget swap: $1.5/1M input is 25% cheaper. Kimi K3 is the top open-weight option if you want a model you can self-host.
The shortest way to see the safest default, the lower-cost option, and the specialist pick before you read deeper.
Claude Fable 5 is the safest overall answer here when you want the strongest default instead of the lowest list price.
Mistral: Mistral Nemo is the lower-cost option to start with when you still need useful output at scale.
Grok 4.6 is the better pick when response speed matters more than maximum reasoning depth.
Claude Fable 5 beats Grok 4.6 on research (100 vs 88) at $10/1M input tokens.
Gemini 3.6 Flash cuts input cost by 25% ($1.5 vs $2/1M) while scoring 91/100 on research.
Kimi K3 is open-weight — self-host it or run it via low-cost API providers at $3/1M input.
Choose Claude Fable 5 when you want the closest overall replacement — it targets the hardest coding tasks, autonomous multi-step agents, and frontier-grade reasoning.
Choose Gemini 3.6 Flash when token volume matters more than peak quality — it is 25% cheaper on input.
Staying with xAI? Grok 4 is the strongest in-house switch at $2/1M input.
Switch the scoring lens to see whether the top answer changes when you care more about cost, speed, or long-document work.
Anthropic / Premium / Jun 9, 2026
New global #1 — 80.3% SWE-Bench Pro, the most capable model generally available.
Ranks models by the broadest mix of coding, writing, research, and long-context usefulness.
You are latency- or cost-sensitive, or your tasks don't need frontier-level reasoning — Opus 4.8 at half the price is plenty.
The fastest way to see where the recommendation shifts when your priority changes.
Finishes agent tasks in half the turns — cheap where it counts.
New global #1 — 80.3% SWE-Bench Pro, the most capable model generally available.
Best Gemini for agents — efficiency king with native computer use.
Closest Chinese challenger to the frontier — #4 overall on intelligence.
Strong coding value with 2M context — an underrated pick at this price.
The frontier ceiling — same model as Fable 5, safeguards lifted, partner-only.
Every figure below is the provider's list price or a published capability score — the same numbers the recommendation on this page is built from.
| Model | Input | Output | Est. month | Context | Speed | Coding | Writing | Research |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Fable 5Anthropic | $10.00/1M | $50.00/1M | $200 | 1M tokens | Deliberate | 100 | 98 | 100 |
| Grok 4.6xAI | $2.00/1M | $6.00/1M | $32 | 500k tokens | Fast | 86 | 84 | 88 |
| Gemini 3.6 FlashGoogle | $1.50/1M | $7.50/1M | $30 | 1.0M tokens | Fast | 92 | 86 | 91 |
| Kimi K3Moonshot | $3.00/1M | $15.00/1M | $60 | 1M tokens | Deliberate | 96 | 90 | 93 |
Capability scores are out of 100 and reflect our own weighting of published benchmarks and production signals — see how we evaluate models. “Est. month” assumes 10M input and 2M output tokens at list price, with no batch or caching discounts applied, so treat it as a ceiling.
What each one is genuinely good at, where it falls down, and the situations we would steer you away from it — not just the headline score.
Anthropic's new Mythos-class flagship and the most capable coding model anyone can use — 80.3% SWE-Bench Pro, an 11-point jump over Opus 4.8. 1M context, 128K output, native parallel subagents. Released June 9, 2026.
You are latency- or cost-sensitive, or your tasks don't need frontier-level reasoning — Opus 4.8 at half the price is plenty.
The strongest coding and reasoning model you can actually use today. 80.3% SWE-Bench Pro is an 11-point leap over Opus 4.8 — the biggest single-release jump of 2026. It costs 2× Opus 4.8, so use it for the hardest agentic and engineering work and keep Opus 4.8 or Sonnet for everyday volume.
Launched June 9, 2026 as the public, Mythos-class release. Available on the Claude API, Microsoft Foundry, and Google Vertex AI. Free for all users until June 22, 2026. Same underlying model as Claude Mythos 5, with safeguards that block specific high-risk cyber responses.
xAI's long-horizon agent model — it finishes agentic tasks in roughly half the turns of its rivals, which makes it cheaper in practice than its per-token price suggests.
You need a published SWE-bench score to justify the pick, or your prompts routinely cross 200K tokens where the price doubles.
Buy it for turn efficiency, not for benchmark ceilings. On long agent runs, finishing in half the turns beats a model that scores two points higher and takes twice as many round trips.
Released August 12, 2026, succeeding Grok 4.5. Long-context billing is a cliff, not a ramp: at 200K tokens and above the whole request is charged at $4/$12. DeepSWE 65.9%, CursorBench 3.2 70.8%, FrontierCode 1.1 Extended 61.3%, Terminal-Bench 3.0 26.5%, APEX-Agents 57.5%.
Google's efficiency-focused successor to 3.5 Flash — higher scores on every benchmark Google tested, ~17% fewer output tokens, and cheaper output pricing.
You need raw frontier reasoning ceiling — Claude Opus 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol lead the hardest tasks.
The best Google model for agents right now. Cheaper, faster, and stronger than 3.5 Flash with the best OSWorld computer-use score in its class. The default Gemini pick until Gemini 4 lands.
Released July 21, 2026 alongside 3.5 Flash-Lite and the gated 3.5 Flash Cyber. Knowledge cutoff March 2026. Batch $0.75/$3.75; cached input $0.15/1M.
Moonshot's 2.8-trillion-parameter multimodal reasoning flagship with always-on thinking — the largest open-weight model ever released and the closest Chinese challenger to the Western frontier.
You need fast responses or predictable output costs — always-on thinking burns tokens.
The first Chinese model to genuinely crowd the Western frontier — #4 on aggregate intelligence ahead of Opus 4.8. The always-on thinking makes it slow and output-heavy, so cost per task runs above the sticker price. A serious Opus-class alternative if latency isn't critical.
Released July 16, 2026; open weights July 26. Cache-hit input $0.30/1M. Subscriptions: Adagio (free) to Vivace $199/mo; full 1M context only on Allegro ($99) and up. New signups paused July 19 near GPU capacity, reopening in batches.
UseRightAI recommendations are based on practical decision factors people actually feel in day-to-day use.
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Claude Fable 5 is the strongest overall alternative. It scores 100/100 on research (Grok 4.6: 88/100) and costs $10/1M input vs $2/1M. New global #1 — 80.3% SWE-Bench Pro, the most capable model generally available.
Gemini 3.6 Flash at $1.5/1M input — 25% cheaper than Grok 4.6's $2/1M. It scores 91/100 on research, so expect a quality step down on the hardest tasks.
Yes — Kimi K3 is the strongest open-weight replacement for Grok 4.6, scoring 93/100 on research against Grok 4.6's 88/100. You can self-host it or run it through hosted APIs at $3/1M input (Grok 4.6 costs $2/1M), with no per-seat subscription. Self-hosting trades the licence saving for infrastructure you have to run, so it pays off at sustained volume rather than for occasional use.
Grok 4 — same provider, same API surface, $2/1M input vs $2/1M. Strong coding value with 2M context — an underrated pick at this price.
Buy it for turn efficiency, not for benchmark ceilings.