Data checked on 15 October 2026

Models and prices, no fanboying.

Numbers from independent benchmarks (Artificial Analysis), human-vote rankings (Arena) and official price lists. Every figure has a source. In a hurry? Start from the four picks below.

Most capableClaude Opus 5.5

58 points, also #1 in WebDev and Agents on Arena.

Best valueGPT-6.1 Sol

52 points at $0.72 per task: an eighth of Opus.

Cheapest that holds upClaude Haiku 5.5

43 points at $0.21, and 240 tokens per second.

Best open weightsMiMo-V2.6-Pro

46 points, runnable on your own servers.

Intelligence vs cost

The Intelligence Index summarises several benchmarks (reasoning, maths, code, knowledge, tool use). Cost per task includes reasoning tokens: a model pricey per token can be cheap per task, and vice versa.

Quality/price frontier● proprietary · ◯ open weightsSource: Artificial Analysis, highest reasoning setting measured · 15 October 2026

All models compared

Click headers to sort

					Context	Best for
Claude Opus 5.5 Anthropic · max	58	$5.98	95 t/s	$4 / $20	1M	The most capable today: long agentic work, complex code, hard analysis.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 Anthropic · max	56	$5.46	131 t/s	$2 / $10	1M	Near-Opus quality at half the token price: an excellent workhorse.
Claude Fable 5.1 Anthropic · max	53	$7.63	71 t/s	$10 / $50	1M	Flagship for writing and long reasoning; the priciest of the family.
GPT-6 Astra OpenAI · max	53	$3.26	44 t/s	$10 / $50	1M	OpenAI's most powerful model: 'Pro' reasoning and very hard tasks.
Gemini 4 Argon Google · high	53	$1.99	—	$2 / $10	1M	Just released: #1 on Arena Text (preliminary) at a moderate price.
Muse Wonder Meta · max	52	$4.52	161 t/s	$4 / $20	1.05M	Meta's new agent model; the Full version reaches 56 points.
GPT-6.1 Sol OpenAI · max	52	$0.72	51 t/s	$2 / $10Above 272K input tokens the input price doubles ($4).	1M	Best value among frontier models.
Muse Spark 1.3 Meta · max	48	$1.6	128 t/s	$1.25 / $4.25	1M	Good balance of quality, speed and price.
Grok 4.7 SpaceXAI (xAI) · xhigh	46	$3.74	91 t/s	$2 / $6	500k	Integrated with X: useful for social-media current events.
MiMo-V2.6-Pro Xiaomi · — · open weights	46	$0.13	47 t/s	various hosts	1M	The best open-weights model today, with a tiny cost per task.
Qwen3.8 Max Alibaba (Qwen) · 0902	45	$5.41	40 t/s	$2 / $6	984k	Strong at multilingual and code; Chinese ecosystem.
GLM-5.3 Z AI (GLM) · max · open weights	45	$2.01	66 t/s	various hosts	1M	Open weights: can be self-hosted for confidential data.
Kimi K3 Moonshot (Kimi) · max · open weights	44	$2	44 t/s	various hosts	1.05M	Open weights with a very long context.
Claude Haiku 5.5 Anthropic · max	43	$0.21	240 t/s	$0.10 / $0.50Up to 100K input tokens; above that $0.50 / $2.50.	1M	Very fast and cheap: classification, extraction, high-volume chatbots.
Gemini 3.8 Flash Google · high	41	$1.24	147 t/s	$0.75 / $3.75Promotional until 31 Dec 2026, then $1.50 / $7.50.	1M	Multimodal (PDF, audio, video in) and fast; has a free API tier.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash DeepSeek · max · open weights	39	$0.27	180 t/s	$0.30 / $1.2Peak rate; off-peak is half price.	1M	Open weights, fast and cheap.
GPT-6 Luna OpenAI · max	38	$0.07	118 t/s	$0.10 / $0.50	1M	ChatGPT's free-tier model: near-zero cost for simple tasks.
Mistral Large 4 Mistral · preview	38	$1.13	—	$0.68 / $2.09Promotional; regular $1.36 / $4.18.	524k	The European option: useful if you need an EU provider.
DeepSeek V4 Pro DeepSeek · max · open weights	36	$0.67	101 t/s	$1.32 / $3.96	1M	Open weights, good low-cost reasoning.

API prices in USD per million tokens (input / output), standard rate. Index, cost per task, speed: Artificial Analysis, highest reasoning setting measured. Prices: provider price lists and Arena.

The price of thinking

The more it thinks, the more it knows. And costs.

The same model, GPT-6.1 Sol, at five effort levels. From low to max the index rises 10 points, but cost per task grows fivefold and response time goes from 15 seconds to almost 5 minutes. For most daily tasks, medium is the sweet spot.

Read the reasoning guide →

low

42 · $0.13 · 15s

medium

48 · $0.21 · 15s

high

50 · $0.32 · 51s

xhigh

51 · $0.39 · 2.2m

max

52 · $0.72 · 4.8m

index cost per task · total response time

Arena

What people prefer

On Arena users compare two anonymous answers and vote for the better one. Millions of votes become an Elo score, as in chess. It measures human preference, not correctness: they often coincide, not always.

1Gemini 4 Argon (high)preliminary1,524
2Muse Wonder (max)1,509
3Claude Opus 5.5 (high)1,508
4Claude Fable 5 (high)1,504
5Claude Fable 5.1 (max)1,502
6Gemini 3.8 Flash (high)preliminary1,496
7Muse Spark 1.3 (max)1,494
8Kimi K3 (max)1,487

arena.ai · Text ↗Elo points15 October 2026

Calculator

What would it cost you, via API?

Set how many requests you make and how long they are. Uses standard token prices (no caching or batch discounts) and 1.3 tokens per English word.

Input words per request 1.500Output words per request 400Requests per month 1.000

Example: a small-site chatbot gets 500-2,000 questions a month; an automation reading 50 invoices a day makes about 1,000 requests a month.

Subscriptions

If you use the apps, not the APIs

Monthly prices in euros shown to Italian customers on official pages. ChatGPT and Google include VAT; Claude excludes it.

ChatGPT

pricing ↗

Freefree
GPT-6 (Luna) with limits, limited images and deep research.
Go€8
More messages, uploads and images. May include ads.
Plus€23
Advanced GPT-6 reasoning, Codex, projects, scheduled tasks.
Profrom €103
Pro reasoning on GPT-6 Astra, always-on Dot agent. Three usage tiers: Pro 100 at €103, Pro 200 at €229, Pro 500 at €510 a month (VAT included).

Claude

pricing ↗

Freefree
Sonnet and Haiku, web search, Artifacts, Claude Docs, Slides and Design.
Pro€18
Opus, Claude Code, projects, Research, Claude in Chrome and Microsoft 365. €15/mo billed yearly. Prices exclude VAT.
Max 5x€90
5x Pro usage, Fable access, monthly API credits included. VAT excluded.
Max 20x€180
20x Pro usage, more monthly API credits included. VAT excluded.

Google AI (Gemini)

pricing ↗

Freefree
Flash-Lite model, Deep Research, Gemini Live, Gemini Notebook, 15 GB.
AI Plus€4.99
Flash model, 2x limits, 200 Flow video credits, 400 GB.
AI Pro€21.99
Gemini 4 Argon and Pro, 4x limits, Antigravity, 1,000 Flow credits, 5 TB.
AI Ultrafrom €99.99
5x or 20x Pro limits (€99.99 or €219.99), Project Genie.

My advice, today

This is my hands-on experience, not a ranking: always test on your own work.

Claude is the best for writing code and for office work: documents, spreadsheets, presentations, even right inside Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
ChatGPT is the best for web research and image generation.
Gemini is the best for analysing many documents at once, especially with Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM), which answers starting from your sources (RAG); also for people who live in Google's suite, for video analysis and for how it writes: clear, fluent language.
In my experience Claude Code is the most complete platform for doing almost anything (code, automation, documents, analysis), and Claude Opus 5.5 currently leads the Artificial Analysis intelligence index.
Grok Bot is my favourite platform for work that carries on over time: several Bots each with a role, memory, routines and a cloud computer that works with your laptop off. The X Subscription also includes Grok and Cursor.
Free plans are enough to start; for daily work, one plan of about €20/month; €100+ plans only make sense if you often hit the limits.

Where the data comes from

Artificial Analysis

Independent benchmarks on intelligence, speed and price for hundreds of models, continuously updated. The intelligence index and cost per task come from here.

artificialanalysis.ai ↗

LMArena

Leaderboards built from millions of people blind-comparing two models: text, code, images, video. The Arena scores come from here.

arena.ai ↗