Updated July 10, 2026

Hello, Ai

Your unbiased guide to the world's smartest AIs

Pick your companion

One-click access to today's frontier leaders. Ranked by capability, updated weekly.

1
Mythos Class
Anthropic

Claude Fable 5

First Mythos-class model cleared for general use. Leads LMArena text overall at 1508 Elo with 95% on SWE-bench Verified and top GDPval-AA knowledge-work scores — gains widen on long-horizon agentic runs.

2
Coding King
Anthropic

Claude Opus 4.8

Codebase-scale agentic coding: parallel-subagent dynamic workflows migrate hundreds of thousands of lines from kickoff to merge. 88.6% on SWE-bench Verified, same price as 4.7.

3
Multimodal Leader
Google

Gemini 3.1 Pro

Dominates reasoning and multimodal tasks. Scored 77% on ARC-AGI-2 — double its predecessor — and leads on graduate-level science benchmarks.

4
Engineering Speed
xAI

Grok 4.5

xAI's recommended chat and code model: 83.3% on Terminal-Bench 2.1, 4.2× fewer output tokens than Opus 4.8 on SWE Bench Pro, served at 80 TPS. $2/$6 with 500K context.

5
Budget Agentic
Meta

Muse Spark 1.1

Meta's first paid frontier API: native multi-agent orchestration, MCP and computer use, 1M self-managed context. #6 on LMArena text overall at 1487 Elo — cheapest agentic option helloai tracks at $1.25/$4.25.

6
Agentic Leap
OpenAI

GPT-5.6 Sol

OpenAI's strongest agentic model, released globally July 9 after a partner-only preview. 88.8% on Terminal-Bench 2.1; Ultra mode reaches 91.9%. Same $5/$30 pricing as GPT-5.5.

Who's actually winning

Elo ratings from Chatbot Arena blind votes. These shift weekly — here's the current snapshot.

1
Claude Fable 5Anthropic
1508
2
Claude Opus 4.8Anthropic
1503
3
Gemini 3.1 ProGoogle
1493
4
Grok 4.5xAI
1490
5
Muse Spark 1.1Meta
1487
6
GPT-5.6 SolOpenAI
1484

Run it yourself

No API key, no usage limits, no data leaving your machine. The best open-weight models ranked by Elo.

1
Efficiency Champion
Google DeepMind

Gemma 4 31B

Google's Gemma 4 31B ranks #3 among all open-weight models on LMArena with an Elo of 1452 — beating models 20x its size. Fits a single RTX 4090 at Q4_K_M and ships Apache 2.0.

18 GB VRAM50 t/sApache 2.0
RTX 4090 (24 GB)
2
Coding Champion
Qwen Team

Qwen3 32B

Alibaba's Qwen3 flagship dense model. Matches Qwen2.5-72B performance in a 32B package that fits a single RTX 4090, with hybrid thinking/non-thinking modes and Apache 2.0.

20 GB VRAM48 t/sApache 2.0
RTX 4090 (24 GB)
3
Single-GPU Pick
Mistral AI

Mistral Small 3.2 24B

The strongest model that comfortably fits a single 24 GB GPU. Adds vision and tool-use over 3.1, tightly instruction-tuned, and Apache 2.0 with no usage restrictions — the best entry point for local AI.

14 GB VRAM65 t/sApache 2.0
RTX 4090 (24 GB)

The real picture

No hype. Where each model actually leads, based on benchmarks and real-world usage as of today.

Overall Preference

Leader: Claude Fable 5

Highest Elo in the tracked set at 1508 on LMArena text overall. Mythos-class capability with conservative safety fallbacks to Opus 4.8 on flagged queries.

Coding & Engineering

Leader: Claude Fable 5

95.0% on SWE-bench Verified and 80% on SWE-bench Pro — well ahead of Opus 4.8. Best pick for long-horizon agentic coding when the 2× price premium is justified.

Hard Reasoning & Science

Leader: Gemini 3.1 Pro

Leads on PhD-level benchmarks like GPQA and ARC-AGI subsets. Claude and Grok are strong contenders.

Honest Daily Use

Leader: Grok 4.5

xAI's default chat model — direct answers without corporate polish, now with coding-grade speed at 80 TPS and 4.2× token efficiency on engineering tasks.

Dispatches from the frontier

Weekly analysis, honest takes, and hidden gems. No engagement bait.

Muse Spark 1.1 Replaces Qwen3.7-Max in helloai's Frontier Set

Meta ships Muse Spark 1.1 with a public API at $1.25/$4.25. helloai drops Qwen3.7-Max and adds Meta as its budget agentic pick at 1487 Elo.

Grok 4.5 Ships as xAI's Default Chat Model

xAI launched Grok 4.5 on July 8 — 83.3% on Terminal-Bench 2.1, 4.2× token efficiency, and $2/$6 pricing. helloai's tracked Grok entry moves from 4.3 to 4.5.

GPT-5.6 Sol Reaches General Availability

OpenAI ends the partner-only preview on July 9. GPT-5.6 Sol replaces GPT-5.5 in helloai's tracked set at the same $5/$30 rate — the upgrade path teams waited on since June 26.

How Caching and Batching Cut Frontier API Costs by 90%

helloai's leaderboard shows nominal per-token rates. Prompt caching and batch APIs stack underneath — turning a $5/MTok flagship into $0.25 on repeated context.

Ollama, Hermes, and GLM-5.2:cloud Are Rewriting the Margin Map

One command routes a full agent harness to MIT-licensed weights at Ollama Pro prices. That stack does not kill frontier labs, but it is eating their easiest revenue.

Frontier Models Score Under 1% on ARC-AGI-3

ARC-AGI-3 launched March 25 with humans at 100% and frontier AI at 0.51%. GPT-5.5 and Opus 4.7 barely move the needle — exposing a gap arena Elo cannot see.

Frontier Releases Now Run Through Government Gates

Fable 5 returns globally July 1 after an 18-day suspension; GPT-5.6 Sol ships only to vetted partners. June 2026 made frontier availability a policy variable, not just an engineering milestone.

Grok 4.3 Lands on Amazon Bedrock

xAI's frontier model is now GA on Amazon Bedrock with the same $1.25/$2.50 pricing, 1M context, and configurable reasoning — the cheapest tracked frontier model just became enterprise-deployable.

Best Model for Coding Right Now

The tracked frontier spans 28 Elo points on coding, but input prices run 4x and output prices 12x. Here is how helloai's scoring picks a winner for engineering work — and when to trade rank for cost.

Fable 5 Suspended: Government Directive Removes Mythos from All Users

Three days after public launch, a US export control order forced Anthropic to disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 worldwide. A narrow reported jailbreak on vulnerability discovery triggered the recall.