Claude Opus 4.8 leads coding benchmarks (88.6% on SWE-bench Verified). DeepSeek V4 is the best open-weights model (80.6% on SWE-bench Verified). Llama 4 Scout offers a record 10-million-token context window. The market has fragmented into very distinct segments.
Leader in complex coding and multi-step reasoning: 88.6% on SWE-bench Verified. 200K token context. API: $5/M input, $25/M output. Best for long-form analysis, refactoring and autonomous agents.
Multimodal and strongly agentic: it chains code, web research and tool use until a task is done. 1M token context. API: $5/M input, $30/M output. Since May 2026, GPT-5.5 Instant is ChatGPT's default model.
Gemini 3.5 Flash (May 2026): Google's strongest agentic and coding model, at half the cost. Gemini 3.1 Pro: 1M context, long-document analysis. Natively multimodal, Workspace integration.
Best open-weights in 2026: 80.6% on SWE-bench Verified. 1M token context. MIT licence, deployable on-premise. API ~$0.44/M input, 10x cheaper than equivalent proprietary models.
xAI flagship (April 2026). 1M token context (up to 2M with Grok 4.1 Fast). API: $1.25/M input, $2.50/M output. Integrated into the X platform.
Open-source with a commercial licence. Llama 4 Scout pushes context to 10M tokens (open-weights record); Maverick reaches 1M. Base of secure on-premise deployments in Europe.
The European champion: 675B open-weight MoE, 256K context. Data sovereignty and EU hosting. Mistral Small 4 merges reasoning, vision and coding into a single model.
Claude Opus 4.8 for complex generation and refactoring. GitHub Copilot (GPT-5.5) for inline IDE assistance.
Llama 4 Scout (10M tokens), Gemini 3.1 Pro (1M) or Grok (up to 2M) for contracts, annual reports and legal corpora.
DeepSeek V4, Llama 4 or Mistral Large 3 on internal infrastructure. No data leaves the organisation.
GPT-5.5 for multimodal (images, audio). Claude Haiku 4.5 or Gemini 3.5 Flash for high-volume at low cost.
Ultra-high performance: Claude Opus 4.8 $5 / $25 | GPT-5.5 $5 / $30
Balanced performance/cost: Claude Sonnet 4.6 ~$3 | Gemini 3.5 Flash ~$0.30
High volume: Claude Haiku 4.5 ~$0.25 | DeepSeek V4-Flash ~$0.14 | GPT-5.5 mini ~$0.15
Self-hosted open-source: DeepSeek V4, Llama 4, Mistral, infrastructure cost only
The right strategy is not to pick one model but to build a multi-model architecture: a flagship model for complex tasks, an economical model for volume, and an open-source on-premise model (DeepSeek V4, Llama 4 or Mistral) for sensitive data. This approach cuts costs by 40 to 60% versus relying on a single premium provider.
Molderez Consult SRL evaluates your use cases and builds a multi-model LLM architecture optimised for your cost, performance and compliance requirements.
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