1stTop pick
Researched 2d agoLing 3.0 Flash Santé
- Release
- 2026-09-04
- Output (from)
- Free
Best LLMs for Classification (2026)
Last refreshed 2026-09-07. Next refresh: weekly.
Best LLMs for text classification, routing, and moderation in 2026. Covers extraction, safety labeling, and structured output tasks.
Verdict
Use Ling 3.0 Flash Santé for classification today.
GLM-5.3 is the runner-up: 2026-09-04 vs 2026-08-14 on Release.
How we rank
Classification picks take the strongest score across MMLU-Pro, MMLU, and lighter classification benchmarks, then recency.
- Eligibility — Models tagged for the classification decision task (routing, moderation, extraction, or classification benchmarks).
- Primary ranking — Maximum score among MMLU-Pro, MMLU, HellaSwag, BoolQ, ANLI, ToxiGen coverage, then newer release.
- Podium freshness — Shortlist cards require `lastResearched` within 60 days and a tracked public output price. Older or unpriced models remain in the full leaderboard with a visible “Verify pricing” reminder when research is older than 45 days.
- 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.
- Pricing — Lowest tracked commercial token pricing.
| # | Model | Input $/1M | Output $/1M | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview PreviewVisionTools Signal used: MMLU 98% | $2.00 | $12.00 | |
| 2 | Llama 3.1 405B Signal used: HellaSwag 95.8% | — | — | |
| 3 | DeepSeek V3 Tools Signal used: HellaSwag 95.7% | $0.10 | $0.28 | |
| 4 | Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct Signal used: HellaSwag 95.6% | $0.18 | $0.28 | |
| 5 | Llama 3.1 70B Instruct Signal used: HellaSwag 94.2% | $0.40 | $0.40 | |
| 6 | Mistral Large 2 VisionTools Signal used: HellaSwag 93.8% | $0.48 | $2.40 | |
| 7 | Mixtral 8x22B v0.1 Signal used: HellaSwag 93.8% | $0.65 | $0.65 | |
| 8 | Falcon 180B Signal used: HellaSwag 92.7% | — | — | |
| 9 | Gemma 2 27B Signal used: HellaSwag 92.6% | $0.08 | $0.24 | |
| 10 | GPT-5.5 ReasoningVisionTools Signal used: MMLU 92.4% | $5.00 | $30.00 | |
| 11 | Llama 3 70B Signal used: HellaSwag 92.4% | $0.65 | $2.75 | |
| 12 | Qwen2-7B Signal used: HellaSwag 92% | $0.05 | $0.15 | |
| 13 | Gemini 3 Pro VisionTools Signal used: MMLU-Pro 91.8% | $1.25 | $5.00 | |
| 14 | Mistral NeMo Instruct (2407) Signal used: HellaSwag 91.8% | $0.02 | $0.04 | |
| 15 | DeepSeek Coder V2 Lite Signal used: HellaSwag 91.4% | $0.50 | $0.50 | |
| 16 | Claude Opus 4.6 ReasoningVisionTools Signal used: MMLU 91.1% | $5.00 | $25.00 | |
| 17 | Llama 3 8B Instruct Signal used: HellaSwag 91.1% | $0.02 | $0.04 | |
| 18 | Mixtral 8x7B Signal used: HellaSwag 90.9% | $0.15 | $0.20 | |
| 19 | Phi-3 Small 128K Signal used: HellaSwag 90.8% | $0.35 | $1.05 | |
| 20 | Mistral 7B Instruct v0.3 Tools Signal used: HellaSwag 90.2% | $0.20 | $0.20 |
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.
Amazon Titan Text Premier is a sophisticated large language model tailored for enterprise-level text generation, part of the Amazon Titan family accessible exclusively through Amazon Bedrock. It boasts an impressive context length of up to 32,000 tokens, ideal for complex English language tasks. The model integrates seamlessly with Amazon Bedrock Agents and Knowledge Bases, supporting functionalities like text and code generation, summarization, and conversational AI. It excels in retrieval-augmented generation, enhancing responses by utilizing external knowledge bases. Users can fine-tune the model to fit unique organizational needs, with safeguards to detect harmful content and protections against copyright claims when used responsibly.
2024-05-07
Release
Amazon Titan Text G1 - Express is Amazon's Titan model. It offers an 8K-token context window.
2024-05-07
Release
Amazon Titan Text G1 - Lite is Amazon's Titan model. It was released 2024-05-07.
2024-05-07
Release
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