Updated July 9, 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
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.

6
Agent Frontier
Alibaba

Qwen3.7-Max

Purpose-built for sustained agentic execution and long-horizon coding workflows. 80.4% SWE-bench Verified and top-tier code arena slices at roughly half the price of closed flagships.

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
GPT-5.6 SolOpenAI
1484
6
Qwen3.7-MaxAlibaba
1475

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.

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.

Claude Fable 5: Mythos Power for General Use

Fable 5 is the first Mythos-class model cleared for normal users, with big leads on long-horizon coding and research at double the prior price and with new safeguard fallbacks.