Updated September 3, 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 5.1

Latest Mythos-class model for long-horizon coding and knowledge work. Same $10/$50 list as Fable 5 with cache reads at $0.25 — Anthropic estimates typical workloads ~25% cheaper. Code Arena WebDev lists claude-fable-5.1-max at 1765.

2
Budget Agentic
Meta

Muse Spark 1.3

Meta's Muse Spark 1.3 — agentic and coding upgrade over 1.2, using ~20% fewer tool calls and ~25% fewer tokens in Meta's own comparisons. Cheapest tracked API at $1.25/$4.25 with 1M context.

3
Coding King
Anthropic

Claude Opus 5

Anthropic's July 2026 successor to Opus 4.8: 96% on SWE-bench Verified, doubles Frontier-Bench performance, and scores 3x the next-best model on ARC-AGI-3 — at the same $5/$25 price.

4
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.

5
2.4T Max
Alibaba

Qwen3.8-Max

Alibaba's 2.4T MoE flagship (95B active): long-horizon coding and professional work at $2/$6 with 1M context. Arena ~1480 Elo — launch sample cooled below Gemini 3.1 Pro.

6
Agentic Code
xAI

Grok 4.6

xAI's current flagship for chat and code at $2/$6 with 500K context. Arena grok-4.6-high ~1461 Elo overall; Code Arena WebDev 1629 now sits well behind Claude Fable 5.1.

Who's actually winning

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

1
Claude Fable 5.1Anthropic
1504
2
Muse Spark 1.3Meta
1499
3
Claude Opus 5Anthropic
1493
4
Gemini 3.1 ProGoogle
1487
5
Qwen3.8-MaxAlibaba
1480
6
Grok 4.6xAI
1461

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 1451 — 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

Qwen3.8-27B

Alibaba's Qwen3.8 generation dense flagship, replacing the Qwen3 32B card at a smaller footprint: 27B parameters, 262K native context, and hybrid tool-use. Fits a single RTX 4090 at Q4 (~15.3 GiB weights); community-reported 65 tok/s decode. Apache 2.0.

17 GB VRAM65 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 — a dependable all-rounder for local daily use.

14 GB VRAM14.8 t/sApache 2.0⚡ Independently measured
GTX 1070 8GB + RTX 5060 8GB (llama.cpp RPC split, 1GbE)
4
MoE Champion
Qwen Team

Qwen3 30B-A3B

A 30B mixture-of-experts with only ~3B parameters active per token. We measured 44.7 tok/s on a two-GPU budget cluster — faster than the dense 8B while packing 4x the capacity. Apache 2.0.

14 GB VRAM44.7 t/sApache 2.0⚡ Independently measured
GTX 1070 8GB + RTX 5060 8GB (llama.cpp RPC split, 1GbE)
5
OpenAI Local
OpenAI

gpt-oss-20b

OpenAI's Apache 2.0 MoE (~21B total / ~3.6B active). Native MXFP4 fits ~16 GB; we measured 53.73 tok/s on the budget two-GPU cluster — the fastest open-weight card we track. Arena ~1317 Elo.

16 GB VRAM53.73 t/sApache 2.0⚡ Independently measured
GTX 1070 8GB + RTX 5060 8GB (llama.cpp RPC split, 1GbE)
6
Two-GPU Pick
Qwen Team

Qwen3 14B

The model that makes pooling two budget GPUs worth it: ~10.5 GB of weights fit neither of our 8 GB cards alone, but the cluster ran it at a measured 19.3 tok/s — 12x faster than single-card CPU offload. Apache 2.0.

11 GB VRAM19.3 t/sApache 2.0⚡ Independently measured
GTX 1070 8GB + RTX 5060 8GB (llama.cpp RPC split, 1GbE)

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 5.1

Highest Elo in the tracked set at 1504 on LMArena text overall. Mythos-class capability with cheaper cache reads than Fable 5 and more precise cyber/biology safeguards.

Coding & Engineering

Leader: Claude Fable 5.1

Leads Code Arena WebDev at 1765 — well above Qwen3.8-Max and Grok 4.6. Same $10/$50 list as Fable 5, with cache reads cut to $0.25.

Hard Reasoning & Science

Leader: Gemini 3.1 Pro

Leads on PhD-level benchmarks like GPQA and ARC-AGI subsets. Claude and Qwen3.8-Max are strong contenders.

Honest Daily Use

Leader: Muse Spark 1.3

Cheapest frontier API we track at $1.25/$4.25 with 1M context — the default when token volume dominates and Mythos-class quality is not required.

Dispatches from the frontier

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

Fable 5.1 Cuts Cache Cost While Taking WebDev

Claude Fable 5.1 keeps the $10/$50 list but cuts cache reads 75%. Code Arena WebDev lists it at 1765, well ahead of Grok 4.6.

OpenAI Cuts Sol's Price 20% While It Leads Terminal-Bench

OpenAI slashed GPT-5.6 Sol's price 20% the same week it topped Terminal-Bench 2.1 against Opus 5 — an invoice argument for a model helloai's Elo-gated table still leaves off the board.

Grok Bot Is a Cloud Teammate. The Local CLI Runs the Site

Grok Bot, launched August 11, is a cloud teammate with its own VM. The local grok CLI is what can actually operate a production checkout like helloai.

Qwen3.8-Max Cools Below Gemini as Arena Votes Arrive

Qwen3.8-Max's launch-week arena lead is gone. Two weeks of votes drop it to 1481 Elo, five points under Gemini 3.1 Pro. The $2/$6 card did not change.

DeepSeek Doubled Its Rate Card and Still Leads Daily Use

DeepSeek V4 Pro's hike is live today: $0.66/$1.98 off-peak, up from $0.435/$0.87. It remains helloai's cheapest tracked frontier API.

Grok 4.6 Ships the Week After helloai Dropped It

xAI ships Grok 4.6 today at the same $2/$6 as 4.5, five days after helloai dropped Grok. Arena votes are still too thin to reopen the slot.

Qwen3.8-Max and DeepSeek Join; Grok and Kimi Exit

helloai admits Qwen3.8-Max and DeepSeek V4 Pro, drops Grok 4.5 and Kimi K3, and adds gpt-oss-20b to the open-weight shelf under the six-model caps.

Muse Spark 1.2 Ships With Muse Code

Meta ships Muse Spark 1.2 with Muse Code at the same $1.25/$4.25 rates. helloai bumps 1.1 to 1.2 at 1498 Elo — still the cheapest agentic pick.

Claude Opus 5 Just Beat Anthropic's Own Flagship

Anthropic's $5/$25 Opus 5 beats its own $10/$50 Fable 5 on Frontier-Bench and ARC-AGI-3, raising an uncomfortable question about who really leads the Claude lineup.

Gemini 3.6 Flash Ships — 3.5 Pro Still Waiting

Google GA'd Gemini 3.6 Flash on July 21 while 3.5 Pro stays partner-only. helloai still tracks Gemini 3.1 Pro — and arena already scores the new Flash near frontier.