MODEL OF THE YEAR2026-05-270D AGO · RELEASE
ANTHROPICPREMIUM
New #1 on every coding benchmark. 69.2% SWE-Bench Pro, 1890 Elo (121 pts ahead of GPT-5.5), native parallel subagents — same $5/$25 price as Opus 4.7.
Input cost$5.00/M
Output cost$25.00/M
Context1M
+ PROS
- +69.2% SWE-Bench Pro — new frontier
- +1890 Arena Elo (67% win rate vs GPT-5.5)
- +Native parallel subagents built in
– CONS
- –Deliberate speed — not for latency-sensitive apps
- –Same price tier as 4.7, not budget-friendly
2026-05-1214D AGO · RELEASE
MISTRALBALANCED
Europe's strongest open release of 2026. A clean middle option for teams that need a non-US model.
Input cost$1.00/M
Output cost$4.50/M
Context256K
+ PROS
- +EU-hosted option
- +Apache 2.0 license
- +Good speed
– CONS
- –Below frontier on coding
- –Smaller ecosystem
2026-04-3026D AGO · RELEASE
OPENAIPREMIUM
Best for agentic, computer-use, and Codex workflows. The right pick if your stack is already OpenAI-native.
Input cost$5.00/M
Output cost$25.00/M
Context1M
+ PROS
- +Top Terminal-Bench at 82.7%
- +Best computer-use ability
- +1M context
– CONS
- –Vision lags Opus 4.7
- –More expensive than 5.4 for marginal gains
2026-04-1641D AGO · RELEASE
ANTHROPICPREMIUM
Was #1 on SWE-Bench Pro at 64.3% — now superseded by Opus 4.8 (69.2%) at the same price. Vision accuracy 98.5%, strong agentic recall. Still fully supported.
Input cost$5.00/M
Output cost$25.00/M
Context1M
+ PROS
- +SWE-Bench Pro 64.3% — still top-tier
- +Vision accuracy 98.5%
- +1M context with sharp recall
– CONS
- –Opus 4.8 is strictly better at the same price
- –New tokenizer can raise effective cost by 35%
2026-04-1145D AGO · DISCLOSED
ANTHROPICINTERNALNOT AVAILABLE
Anthropic's most powerful internal model. Found thousands of zero-days autonomously. Not released publicly.
Input cost—
Output cost—
Context—
+ PROS
- +Frontier of frontier
- +Autonomous capabilities reported
– CONS
- –Not available — disclosed only
2026-03-2265D AGO · RELEASE
OPENAIPREMIUM
OpenAI's best price/quality. Pair with Claude Opus for hybrid stacks — they're complementary, not competitive.
Input cost$2.50/M
Output cost$15.00/M
Context272K
+ PROS
- +7× cheaper than Opus 4.7
- +Top-tier reasoning
- +Mature tools/agents
– CONS
- –Context capped at 272K
- –Vision lags Gemini
2026-03-0483D AGO · RELEASE
GOOGLEPREMIUM
Research workhorse. 2M context, native multimodality, and the best-priced premium model in the directory.
Input cost$1.25/M
Output cost$10.00/M
Context2M
+ PROS
- +2M context
- +Best research score
- +Best price-per-quality at premium tier
– CONS
- –Lags top tier on raw coding
- –Stuck inside Google's tooling
2026-02-1897D AGO · RELEASE
XAIBALANCED
Strong coding value at 2M context. Underrated at this price tier. The contrarian voice helps in research.
Input cost$2.00/M
Output cost$10.00/M
Context2M
+ PROS
- +2M context at $2/M input
- +Strong reasoning
- +Real-time X data integration
– CONS
- –Writing voice is uneven
- –Smaller ecosystem
2026-02-04111D AGO · RELEASE
METABUDGET
10M context is the headline. Useful for indexing entire codebases but accuracy degrades past 1M.
Input cost$0.30/M
Output cost$1.20/M
Context10M
+ PROS
- +10M context window — by far the largest
- +Open weights
- +Cheap
– CONS
- –Long-context accuracy thins out past 1M
- –Below frontier on reasoning
2026-02-04111D AGO · RELEASE
METABUDGET
Biggest open-weight leap of 2026. Competitive with GPT-5.4 on general tasks at a quarter of the price.
Input cost$0.60/M
Output cost$2.40/M
Context256K
+ PROS
- +Open weights at near-frontier quality
- +Fast
- +Strong math
– CONS
- –256K context lags Scout
- –No native multimodality
2026-01-22124D AGO · RELEASE
DEEPSEEKOPEN-WEIGHTS
Open-weights, $0.27/M input, beats GPT-4o on coding. Quietly the most disruptive release of January.
Input cost$0.27/M
Output cost$1.10/M
Context128K
+ PROS
- +Cheapest serious code model
- +Open weights — self-hostable
- +Strong math
– CONS
- –Data residency questions for some teams
- –Vision is weak
2026-01-08138D AGO · RELEASE
ANTHROPICBUDGET
Fast, cheap, surprisingly capable. The cheapest model in the lineup that you can actually ship behind a feature flag.
Input cost$0.80/M
Output cost$4.00/M
Context200K
+ PROS
- +96-score speed — fastest in directory
- +Cheapest serious model at $0.80/M input
- +Vision matches mid-tier from 2025
– CONS
- –SWE-Bench Pro under 30%
- –Context capped at 200K
