1stTop pick
Researched 55d agoGPT-5.6 Sol
- GPQA Diamond
- 94.6%
- Output (from)
- $30.00 / 1M
The Best Mainstream LLM APIs, Ranked (2026)
Last refreshed 2026-09-02. Next refresh: weekly.
The best LLM APIs for developers in 2026 — ranked by benchmark quality first, then price. Updated daily with live provider pricing.
Verdict
Use GPT-5.6 Sol for mainstream API work today.
Kimi K3 is the runner-up, 1 point back on GPQA Diamond.
2ndShortlist
Researched 9d agoKimi K3
- GPQA Diamond
- 93.5%
- Output (from)
- $15.00 / 1M
3rdShortlist
Researched 9d agoQwen3.8-Max
- GPQA Diamond
- 92.6%
- Output (from)
- $6.00 / 1M
How we rank
Mainstream API picks now lead with capability: GPQA Diamond first, MMLU as fallback, then price only as the tie-break.
- Eligibility — Chat/completion models that pass the generic API leaderboard filter (no embeddings/rerankers/modality SKUs).
- Primary ranking — GPQA Diamond, then MMLU when GPQA is missing or tied.
- Variant collapse — We keep one row per model family (`familySlug` + parameter tier). When headline scores tie within ±0.5 pt (±10 Elo on Chatbot Arena), we pick the canonical SKU by lowest tracked input price, then GA over preview or limited access, then newest `release`. A folded sibling within the benchmark noise band can show a "Tied within margin" chip on that score cell.
- Price tie-break — Lower tracked input $/1M wins only after the capability scores are exhausted.
- Pricing — Rates reflect tracked provider rows — spot/check enterprise tiers separately.
| # | Model | Input $/1M | Output $/1M | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GPT-5.6 Sol ReasoningVisionTools Capability signal: GPQA Diamond 94.6% | $5.00 | $30.00 | |
| 2 | Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview PreviewVisionTools Capability signal: GPQA Diamond 94.3% | $2.00 | $12.00 | |
| 3 | Claude Opus 4.7 ReasoningVisionTools Capability signal: GPQA Diamond 94.2% | $5.00 | $25.00 | |
| 4 | GPT-5.5 ReasoningVisionTools Capability signal: GPQA Diamond 93.6% | $5.00 | $30.00 | |
| 5 | Claude Opus 4.8 ReasoningVisionTools Capability signal: GPQA Diamond 93.6% | $5.00 | $25.00 | |
| 6 | GPT-5.5 Pro ReasoningVisionTools Capability signal: GPQA Diamond 93.6% | $30.00 | $180.00 | |
| 7 | Kimi K3 ReasoningVisionTools Capability signal: GPQA Diamond 93.5% | $3.00 | $15.00 | |
| 8 | MiniMax M3 ReasoningVisionTools Capability signal: GPQA Diamond 92.9% | $0.30 | $1.20 | |
| 9 | Qwen3.8-Max ReasoningVisionTools Capability signal: GPQA Diamond 92.6% | $2.00 | $6.00 | |
| 10 | Qwen3.7-Max ReasoningTools Capability signal: GPQA Diamond 92.4% | $1.25 | $3.75 | |
| 11 | Gemini 3.5 Flash ReasoningVisionTools Capability signal: GPQA Diamond 92.2% | $1.50 | $9.00 | |
| 12 | GPT-5.4 ReasoningVisionTools Capability signal: GPQA Diamond 92% | $2.50 | $15.00 | |
| 13 | Gemini 3 Pro VisionTools Capability signal: GPQA Diamond 91.9% | $1.25 | $5.00 | |
| 14 | Claude Opus 4.6 ReasoningVisionTools Capability signal: GPQA Diamond 91.3% | $5.00 | $25.00 | |
| 15 | GLM-5.2 ReasoningTools Capability signal: GPQA Diamond 91.2% | $1.40 | $4.40 | |
| 16 | Kimi K2.6 ReasoningVisionTools Capability signal: GPQA Diamond 90.5% | $0.73 | $3.40 | |
| 17 | Qwen3.6-Plus VisionTools Capability signal: GPQA Diamond 90.4% | $0.33 | $1.95 | |
| 18 | Gemini 3 Flash PreviewVisionTools Capability signal: GPQA Diamond 90.4% | $0.50 | $3.00 | |
| 19 | DeepSeek V4 Pro ReasoningTools Capability signal: GPQA Diamond 90.1% | $0.43 | $0.87 | |
| 20 | Grok 4.3 ReasoningVisionTools Capability signal: GPQA Diamond 90.1% | $1.25 | $2.50 |
Honorable mentions
Next seats in this ranking. Lines below are from each model's stored description in LLMReference seed data—spot-check the model page before relying on a capability claim.
Alibaba's closed-weight flagship language model, announced at the 2026 Alibaba Cloud Summit (May 20). Scored 56.6 on Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at launch—highest-ranked Chinese model. 1M-token context with prompt caching (up to 90% discount). Pricing: $2.50/$7.50 per 1M tokens in/out.
92.4%
GPQA Diamond
Gemini 3.5 Flash is Google DeepMind's generally available Flash model for sustained frontier-level performance on agentic and coding tasks. It supports multimodal inputs, native thinking, tool and function calling, structured outputs, code execution, search grounding, batch processing, and long contexts up to 1M tokens.
92.2%
GPQA Diamond
- #6GPT-5.4
GPT-5.4 is OpenAI's flagship frontier reasoning model, released March 5, 2026. It incorporates advances from GPT-5.3-Codex for coding and agentic workflows, and adds 'Thinking' mode with editable reasoning plans. Key capabilities include computer use (navigating interfaces via Playwright), image understanding and generation integration, full-stack web app generation, tool calling, and deep research. Knowledge cutoff is August 31, 2025. Model ID: gpt-5.4.
92%
GPQA Diamond
Compare Top Picks
Side-by-side comparison of the top picks by price, benchmark, and API access.
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