1stTop pick
Researched 37d agoKimi K3
- GPQA Diamond
- 93.5%
- Output (from)
- $11.20 / 1M
Best Reasoning LLMs (2026)
Last refreshed 2026-09-29. Next refresh: weekly.
Best reasoning and math LLMs in 2026, ranked by GPQA Diamond and MMLU. Includes thinking-mode models and chain-of-thought specialists.
Verdict
Use Kimi K3 for reasoning today.
Qwen3.8-Max is the runner-up, 0.9 points back on GPQA Diamond.
2ndShortlist
Researched 37d agoQwen3.8-Max
- GPQA Diamond
- 92.6%
- Output (from)
- $6.00 / 1M
3rdShortlist
Researched 9d agoGemini 3 Pro
- GPQA Diamond
- 91.9%
- Output (from)
- $5.00 / 1M
How we rank
Reasoning boards prioritize GPQA Diamond scores, favoring models explicitly tagged for reasoning or unusually strong GPQA.
- Eligibility — Reasoning flag or GPQA Diamond above the editorial floor used on this page.
- Primary ranking — GPQA Diamond (higher is better), then newer release.
- 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 — Reasoning tiers are often priced separately — confirm provider SKUs.
| # | Model | Input $/1M | Output $/1M | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GPT-5.6 Sol ReasoningVisionTools GPQA Diamond: 94.6% | $5.00 | $30.00 | |
| 2 | Claude Mythos Preview Invite-onlyReasoningVisionTools GPQA Diamond: 94.6% | — | — | |
| 3 | Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview PreviewVisionTools GPQA Diamond: 94.3% | $2.00 | $12.00 | |
| 4 | Claude Opus 4.7 ReasoningVisionTools GPQA Diamond: 94.2% | $5.00 | $25.00 | |
| 5 | Claude Opus 4.8 ReasoningVisionTools GPQA Diamond: 93.6% | $5.00 | $25.00 | |
| 6 | GPT-5.5 ReasoningVisionTools GPQA Diamond: 93.6% | $5.00 | $30.00 | |
| 7 | GPT-5.5 Pro ReasoningVisionTools GPQA Diamond: 93.6% | $30.00 | $180.00 | |
| 8 | Kimi K3 ReasoningVisionTools GPQA Diamond: 93.5% | $2.00 | $11.20 | |
| 9 | MiniMax M3 ReasoningVisionTools GPQA Diamond: 92.9% | $0.30 | $1.20 | |
| 10 | Qwen3.8-Max ReasoningVisionTools GPQA Diamond: 92.6% | $2.00 | $6.00 | |
| 11 | Qwen3.7-Max ReasoningTools GPQA Diamond: 92.4% | $1.25 | $3.75 | |
| 12 | Gemini 3.5 Flash ReasoningVisionTools GPQA Diamond: 92.2% | $1.50 | $9.00 | |
| 13 | GPT-5.4 ReasoningVisionTools GPQA Diamond: 92% | $2.50 | $15.00 | |
| 14 | Gemini 3 Pro VisionTools GPQA Diamond: 91.9% | $1.25 | $5.00 | |
| 15 | Qwen3.6-Max Vision GPQA Diamond: 91.8% | — | — | |
| 16 | Qwen3.8-Flash-Next ReasoningVision GPQA Diamond: 91.7% | $0.15 | $0.47 | |
| 17 | Claude Opus 4.6 ReasoningVisionTools GPQA Diamond: 91.3% | $5.00 | $25.00 | |
| 18 | GLM-5.2 ReasoningTools GPQA Diamond: 91.2% | $1.40 | $4.40 | |
| 19 | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash ReasoningVisionTools GPQA Diamond: 90.9% | $0.15 | $0.60 | |
| 20 | Kimi K2.6 ReasoningVisionTools GPQA Diamond: 90.5% | $0.73 | $3.40 |
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.
Qwen3.6-Max builds upon Qwen3-Max and Qwen3.6-Plus to deliver enhanced vibe coding capabilities, more efficient coding agent execution, and significantly improved front-end development skills. Its long-tail knowledge retention has been further upgraded, making it Alibaba's most capable multimodal flagship as of April 2026.
91.8%
GPQA Diamond
Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is Alibaba's experimental open-weight preview of the architecture planned for Qwen4. It is a 125B-total / 6B-active Mixture-of-Experts causal language model with a vision encoder, plus 51B n-gram embedding and 4B MTP parameters. Native context is 262,144 tokens (extensible to 1,000,000). Weights are on Hugging Face under the Qwen Community License 1.0. No first-party hosted token prices are seeded.
91.7%
GPQA Diamond
Claude Opus 4.6 is Anthropic's Claude 4.6 model with multimodal text and image input and an optional reasoning mode. It offers a 1M-token context window and scores 80.8 on SWE-bench Verified.
91.3%
GPQA Diamond
Compare Top Picks
Side-by-side comparison of the top picks by price, benchmark, and API access.
Browse Other Categories
Best LLMs for Code GenerationBest LLMs for RAGBest LLMs for Agents vs Agent Products (2026)Best LLMs for ClassificationBest Open Source LLMsBest Multimodal / Vision LLMsBest LLM for Translation in 2026Best AI Image Models in 2026Best AI Video Models in 2026Best Small Language Models (SLMs)Best LLMs for JSON / Tool useCheapest LLM APIs You Can Call Right NowBest Long Context LLMsBest Mainstream LLM APIs, RankedBest LLMs for EnterpriseBest Free LLMs You Can Use Right NowBest LLMs for WritingBest LLMs for MarketingBest LLMs for Customer Support