/best/researchupdated October 2026164 models evaluated
Best AI for research
Synthesizing sources, answering with citations, deep reading.
Research workloads punish hallucination harder than almost any other task. The model has to read long, contradictory sources and produce an answer that a specialist wouldn't laugh at. Long-context retention and tool-use (search, browsing) are table stakes — a model with a 128K context window that loses track of page 1 by page 100 is useless for real research.
What matters: long-context faithfulness, reasoning chain quality, and willingness to say 'I don't know' rather than confabulate. Models with retrieval-augmented architectures (like Sonar Pro) have a natural edge here, but frontier chat models with large context windows are competitive when source material is provided directly.
Our research rank weights long-context (2×), reasoning (1.5×), tool-use (1×), and multilingual (0.5×). Multilingual matters more than people expect — research sources are rarely all in English.
Full rankings
All 164 models, scored for research
| # | Model | Provider | Task score | $/in | $/out | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL | IInclusionai | 5.00/5.0 | $0.021 | $0.062 | 262K |
| 02 | Ling-3.0-flash | IInclusionai | 5.00/5.0 | $0.021 | $0.063 | 262K |
| 03 | Nex AGI: Nex-N2-Mini | NNex-agi | 5.00/5.0 | $0.025 | $0.100 | 262K |
| 04 | Qwen: Qwen3.7 Flash | QQwen | 5.00/5.0 | $0.030 | $0.130 | 1M |
| 05 | NVIDIA: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | NNVIDIA | 5.00/5.0 | $0.047 | $0.134 | 262K |
| 06 | OpenAI: gpt-oss-120b | OOpenAI | 5.00/5.0 | $0.037 | $0.170 | 131K |
| 07 | NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B | NNVIDIA | 5.00/5.0 | $0.060 | $0.240 | 262K |
| 08 | MiMo-V2.5 | XXiaomi | 5.00/5.0 | $0.140 | $0.280 | 1.1M |
| 09 | Gemma 4 26B A4B | GGoogle | 5.00/5.0 | $0.090 | $0.300 | 262K |
| 10 | Xiaomi: MiMo-V2-Flash | XXiaomi | 5.00/5.0 | $0.100 | $0.300 | 262K |
| 11 | StepFun: Step 3.5 Flash | SStepfun | 5.00/5.0 | $0.100 | $0.300 | 262K |
| 12 | Upstage: Solar Pro 4 | UUpstage | 5.00/5.0 | $0.090 | $0.360 | 524K |
| 13 | GLM-4.7 Flash | ZZhipu AI | 5.00/5.0 | $0.060 | $0.400 | 200K |
| 14 | NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Super | NNVIDIA | 5.00/5.0 | $0.080 | $0.450 | 262K |
| 15 | DeepSeek V3.2 | DDeepSeek | 5.00/5.0 | $0.259 | $0.420 | 164K |
| 16 | Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash | ZZhipu AI | 5.00/5.0 | $0.150 | $0.500 | 1.0M |
| 17 | Grok 4.1 Fast | XXAI | 5.00/5.0 | $0.200 | $0.500 | 2M |
| 18 | Qwen: Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507 | QQwen | 5.00/5.0 | $0.090 | $0.550 | 262K |
| 19 | Qwen: Qwen3.5-35B-A3B | QQwen | 5.00/5.0 | $0.080 | $0.750 | 262K |
| 20 | Inception: Mercury 2 | IInception | 5.00/5.0 | $0.250 | $0.750 | 128K |
| 21 | MiMo-V2.5-Pro | XXiaomi | 5.00/5.0 | $0.435 | $0.870 | 1.1M |
| 22 | Qwen: Qwen3.6 35B A3B | QQwen | 5.00/5.0 | $0.150 | $1.00 | 262K |
| 23 | OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Luna | OOpenAI | 5.00/5.0 | $0.200 | $1.20 | 1.1M |
| 24 | MiniMax: MiniMax M3 | MMinimax | 5.00/5.0 | $0.300 | $1.20 | 1.0M |
| 25 | Meta: Muse Glimmer 30B | MMeta | 5.00/5.0 | $0.300 | $1.20 | 131K |
| 26 | Thinking Machines: Inkling Small | TThinkingmachines | 5.00/5.0 | $0.450 | $1.20 | 524K |
| 27 | Qwen: Qwen3.7 Plus | QQwen | 5.00/5.0 | $0.320 | $1.28 | 1M |
| 28 | AionLabs: Aion-3.0-Mini | AAion-labs | 5.00/5.0 | $0.700 | $1.40 | 131K |
| 29 | Qwen: Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 | QQwen | 5.00/5.0 | $0.300 | $1.80 | 1M |
| 30 | Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus | QQwen | 5.00/5.0 | $0.325 | $1.95 | 1M |
| 31 | GPT-5 Mini | OOpenAI | 5.00/5.0 | $0.250 | $2.00 | 400K |
| 32 | ByteDance Seed: Seed-2.0-Lite | BBytedance-seed | 5.00/5.0 | $0.250 | $2.00 | 262K |
| 33 | ByteDance Seed: Seed 1.6 | BBytedance-seed | 5.00/5.0 | $0.250 | $2.00 | 262K |
| 34 | xAI: Grok Build 0.1 | XXAI | 5.00/5.0 | $1.00 | $2.00 | 256K |
| 35 | NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Ultra | NNVIDIA | 5.00/5.0 | $0.500 | $2.20 | 262K |
| 36 | GLM-4.7 | ZZhipu AI | 5.00/5.0 | $0.600 | $2.20 | 205K |
| 37 | MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 | MMoonshotAI | 5.00/5.0 | $0.465 | $2.45 | 262K |
| 38 | Qwen: Qwen3.8 27B | QQwen | 5.00/5.0 | $0.425 | $2.55 | 1M |
| 39 | Qwen: Qwen3.6 27B | QQwen | 5.00/5.0 | $0.450 | $2.70 | 262K |
| 40 | Grok 4.20 | XXAI | 5.00/5.0 | $1.25 | $2.50 | 2M |
| 41 | Gemini 3 Flash Preview | GGoogle | 5.00/5.0 | $0.500 | $3.00 | 1.0M |
| 42 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 | DDeepSeek | 5.00/5.0 | $1.32 | $3.96 | 1.0M |
| 43 | Meta: Muse Spark 1.3 | MMeta | 5.00/5.0 | $1.25 | $4.25 | 1.0M |
| 44 | Meta: Muse Spark 1.2 | MMeta | 5.00/5.0 | $1.25 | $4.25 | 1.0M |
| 45 | Meta: Muse Spark 1.1 | MMeta | 5.00/5.0 | $1.25 | $4.25 | 1.0M |
| 46 | GPT-5.4 Mini | OOpenAI | 5.00/5.0 | $0.750 | $4.50 | 400K |
| 47 | o4 Mini | OOpenAI | 5.00/5.0 | $1.10 | $4.40 | 200K |
| 48 | Qwen 3.7 Max | QQwen | 5.00/5.0 | $1.48 | $4.42 | 1M |
| 49 | Claude Haiku 4.5 | AAnthropic | 5.00/5.0 | $1.00 | $5.00 | 200K |
| 50 | OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Luna Pro | OOpenAI | 5.00/5.0 | $1.00 | $6.00 | 1.1M |
| 51 | Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview | QQwen | 5.00/5.0 | $1.03 | $6.16 | 262K |
| 52 | Grok 4.5 | XXAI | 5.00/5.0 | $2.00 | $6.00 | 500K |
| 53 | Grok 4.6 | XXAI | 5.00/5.0 | $2.00 | $6.00 | 500K |
| 54 | Qwen: Qwen3.8 Max | QQwen | 5.00/5.0 | $2.00 | $6.00 | 1M |
| 55 | Sakana: Fugu Max | SSakana | 5.00/5.0 | $2.00 | $6.00 | 1M |
| 56 | AionLabs: Aion-3.0 | AAion-labs | 5.00/5.0 | $3.00 | $6.00 | 131K |
| 57 | Z.ai: GLM 5.3 | ZZhipu AI | 5.00/5.0 | $0.039 | $7.00 | 1.0M |
| 58 | Z.ai: GLM 5.2 | ZZhipu AI | 5.00/5.0 | $0.084 | $8.00 | 1.0M |
| 59 | GPT-4.1 | OOpenAI | 5.00/5.0 | $2.00 | $8.00 | 1.0M |
| 60 | GPT-5 | OOpenAI | 5.00/5.0 | $1.25 | $10.00 | 400K |
| 61 | GPT-5.1 | OOpenAI | 5.00/5.0 | $1.25 | $10.00 | 400K |
| 62 | OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Sol | OOpenAI | 5.00/5.0 | $2.00 | $10.00 | 1.1M |
| 63 | MoonshotAI: Kimi K3 | MMoonshotAI | 5.00/5.0 | $0.500 | $12.00 | 1.0M |
| 64 | Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | GGoogle | 5.00/5.0 | $2.00 | $12.00 | 1.0M |
| 65 | OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Terra | OOpenAI | 5.00/5.0 | $2.00 | $12.00 | 1.1M |
| 66 | GPT-5.2 | OOpenAI | 5.00/5.0 | $1.75 | $14.00 | 400K |
| 67 | OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Terra Pro | OOpenAI | 5.00/5.0 | $2.50 | $15.00 | 1.1M |
| 68 | GPT-5.4 | OOpenAI | 5.00/5.0 | $2.50 | $15.00 | 1.1M |
| 69 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | AAnthropic | 5.00/5.0 | $3.00 | $15.00 | 1M |
| 70 | Grok 4 | XXAI | 5.00/5.0 | $3.00 | $15.00 | 256K |
| 71 | Grok 3 | XXAI | 5.00/5.0 | $3.00 | $15.00 | 131K |
| 72 | Claude Opus 5 | AAnthropic | 5.00/5.0 | $5.00 | $25.00 | 1M |
| 73 | Claude Opus 4.7 | AAnthropic | 5.00/5.0 | $5.00 | $25.00 | 1M |
| 74 | Claude Opus 4.6 | AAnthropic | 5.00/5.0 | $5.00 | $25.00 | 1M |
| 75 | Anthropic: Claude Opus 4.8 (Fast) | AAnthropic | 5.00/5.0 | $10.00 | $50.00 | 1M |
| 76 | Anthropic: Claude Fable 5 | AAnthropic | 5.00/5.0 | $10.00 | $50.00 | 1M |
| 77 | Claude Opus 5 (Fast) | AAnthropic | 5.00/5.0 | $10.00 | $50.00 | 1M |
| 78 | Anthropic: Claude Fable 5.1 | AAnthropic | 5.00/5.0 | $10.00 | $50.00 | 1M |
| 79 | Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 | PPoolside | 4.67/5.0 | $0.060 | $0.120 | 262K |
| 80 | Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview | IInception | 4.67/5.0 | $0.040 | $0.150 | 260K |
| 81 | IBM: Granite 4.2 8B | IIbm-granite | 4.67/5.0 | $0.060 | $0.250 | 131K |
| 82 | Gemma 4 31B | GGoogle | 4.67/5.0 | $0.090 | $0.340 | 262K |
| 83 | Qwen: Qwen3.8 Flash | QQwen | 4.67/5.0 | $0.150 | $0.470 | 1M |
| 84 | KAT-Coder-Air V2.5 | KKwaipilot | 4.67/5.0 | $0.150 | $0.600 | 256K |
| 85 | inclusionAI: Ring-2.6-1T | IInclusionai | 4.67/5.0 | $0.075 | $0.625 | 262K |
| 86 | inclusionAI: Ling-2.6-1T | IInclusionai | 4.67/5.0 | $0.075 | $0.625 | 262K |
| 87 | Arcee AI: Trinity Large Thinking | AArcee-ai | 4.67/5.0 | $0.250 | $0.800 | 262K |
| 88 | MiniMax: MiniMax M2.7 | MMinimax | 4.67/5.0 | $0.210 | $0.840 | 205K |
| 89 | DeepSeek V3.1 | DDeepSeek | 4.67/5.0 | $0.250 | $0.950 | 164K |
| 90 | Nex-N2-Pro | NNex AGI | 4.67/5.0 | $0.250 | $1.00 | 262K |
| 91 | Qwen: Qwen3.6 Flash | QQwen | 4.67/5.0 | $0.188 | $1.13 | 1M |
| 92 | StepFun: Step 3.7 Flash | SStepfun | 4.67/5.0 | $0.200 | $1.15 | 262K |
| 93 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 | DDeepSeek | 4.67/5.0 | $0.005 | $1.28 | 1.0M |
| 94 | DeepSeek V4 Flash | DDeepSeek | 4.67/5.0 | $0.007 | $1.28 | 1.0M |
| 95 | Kwaipilot: KAT-Coder-Pro V2 | KKwaipilot | 4.67/5.0 | $0.300 | $1.20 | 262K |
| 96 | Meituan: LongCat 2.0 | MMeituan | 4.67/5.0 | $0.300 | $1.20 | 1.0M |
| 97 | MiniMax: MiniMax M2 | MMinimax | 4.67/5.0 | $0.300 | $1.20 | 205K |
| 98 | GPT-5.4 Nano | OOpenAI | 4.67/5.0 | $0.200 | $1.25 | 400K |
| 99 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview | GGoogle | 4.67/5.0 | $0.250 | $1.50 | 1.0M |
| 100 | AionLabs: Aion-2.0 | AAion-labs | 4.67/5.0 | $0.800 | $1.60 | 131K |
| 101 | Mistral Medium 3.1 | MMistral | 4.67/5.0 | $0.400 | $2.00 | 131K |
| 102 | DeepSeek V4 Pro | DDeepSeek | 4.67/5.0 | $0.955 | $1.91 | 1.0M |
| 103 | R1 0528 | DDeepSeek | 4.67/5.0 | $0.500 | $2.15 | 164K |
| 104 | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | GGoogle | 4.67/5.0 | $0.300 | $2.50 | 1.0M |
| 105 | Seed 2.1 Turbo | BByteDance | 4.67/5.0 | $0.500 | $2.50 | 262K |
| 106 | R1 | DDeepSeek | 4.67/5.0 | $0.700 | $2.50 | 64K |
| 107 | Grok 4.3 | XXAI | 4.67/5.0 | $1.25 | $2.50 | 1M |
| 108 | ByteDance Seed: Seed-2.0-Code | BBytedance-seed | 4.67/5.0 | $0.500 | $3.00 | 262K |
| 109 | KAT-Coder-Pro V2.5 | KKwaipilot | 4.67/5.0 | $0.740 | $2.96 | 262K |
| 110 | Kimi K2.7 Code | MMoonshot AI | 4.67/5.0 | $0.671 | $3.35 | 262K |
| 111 | Google: Gemini 3.8 Flash | GGoogle | 4.67/5.0 | $0.750 | $3.75 | 1.0M |
| 112 | Google: Gemini 3.7 Flash | GGoogle | 4.67/5.0 | $0.750 | $3.75 | 1.0M |
| 113 | Gemini 3.6 Flash | GGoogle | 4.67/5.0 | $0.750 | $3.75 | 1.0M |
| 114 | Thinking Machines: Inkling | TThinkingmachines | 4.67/5.0 | $1.00 | $4.05 | 524K |
| 115 | Mistral Medium 3.5 | MMistral | 4.67/5.0 | $1.50 | $7.50 | 262K |
| 116 | o3 | OOpenAI | 4.67/5.0 | $2.00 | $8.00 | 200K |
| 117 | Gemini 3.5 Flash | GGoogle | 4.67/5.0 | $1.50 | $9.00 | 1.0M |
| 118 | Gemini 2.5 Pro | GGoogle | 4.67/5.0 | $1.25 | $10.00 | 1.0M |
| 119 | Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 5 | AAnthropic | 4.67/5.0 | $2.00 | $10.00 | 1M |
| 120 | Anthropic: Claude Opus 4.8 | AAnthropic | 4.67/5.0 | $5.00 | $25.00 | 1M |
| 121 | GPT-5.5 | OOpenAI | 4.67/5.0 | $5.00 | $30.00 | 1.1M |
| 122 | OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Sol Pro | OOpenAI | 4.67/5.0 | $5.00 | $30.00 | 1.1M |
| 123 | inclusionAI: Ling-2.6-flash | IInclusionai | 4.33/5.0 | $0.010 | $0.030 | 262K |
| 124 | OpenAI: gpt-oss-20b | OOpenAI | 4.33/5.0 | $0.018 | $0.090 | 131K |
| 125 | IBM: Granite 4.1 8B | IIbm-granite | 4.33/5.0 | $0.050 | $0.100 | 131K |
| 126 | Inception: Mercury 2.5 | IInception | 4.33/5.0 | $0.040 | $0.150 | 260K |
| 127 | Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B | QQwen | 4.33/5.0 | $0.100 | $0.150 | 262K |
| 128 | Poolside Laguna S 2.1 | PPoolside | 4.33/5.0 | $0.090 | $0.180 | 1.0M |
| 129 | Qwen: Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 | QQwen | 4.33/5.0 | $0.100 | $0.300 | 262K |
| 130 | GPT-5 Nano | OOpenAI | 4.33/5.0 | $0.050 | $0.400 | 400K |
| 131 | ByteDance Seed: Seed-2.0-Mini | BBytedance-seed | 4.33/5.0 | $0.100 | $0.400 | 262K |
| 132 | Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite | GGoogle | 4.33/5.0 | $0.100 | $0.400 | 1.0M |
| 133 | Grok 3 Mini | XXAI | 4.33/5.0 | $0.300 | $0.500 | 131K |
| 134 | DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus | DDeepSeek | 4.33/5.0 | $0.270 | $1.00 | 164K |
| 135 | MiniMax: MiniMax M2.5 | MMinimax | 4.33/5.0 | $0.270 | $1.08 | 205K |
| 136 | MiniMax: MiniMax M2.1 | MMinimax | 4.33/5.0 | $0.300 | $1.20 | 205K |
| 137 | Google: Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | GGoogle | 4.33/5.0 | $0.250 | $1.50 | 1.0M |
| 138 | Mistral Large 3 2512 | MMistral | 4.33/5.0 | $0.500 | $1.50 | 262K |
| 139 | GPT-4.1 Mini | OOpenAI | 4.33/5.0 | $0.400 | $1.60 | 1.0M |
| 140 | Devstral 2 2512 | MMistral | 4.33/5.0 | $0.400 | $2.00 | 262K |
| 141 | MiniMax: MiniMax M1 | MMinimax | 4.33/5.0 | $0.550 | $2.20 | 1M |
| 142 | Relace: Relace Search | RRelace | 4.33/5.0 | $1.00 | $3.00 | 256K |
| 143 | Ministral 3 14B 2512 | MMistral | 4.00/5.0 | $0.200 | $0.200 | 262K |
| 144 | ByteDance Seed: Seed 1.6 Flash | BBytedance-seed | 4.00/5.0 | $0.075 | $0.300 | 262K |
| 145 | Llama 3.3 70B Instruct | MMeta | 4.00/5.0 | $0.220 | $0.500 | 131K |
| 146 | Upstage: Solar Pro 3 | UUpstage | 4.00/5.0 | $0.150 | $0.600 | 131K |
| 147 | Mistral Small 4 | MMistral | 4.00/5.0 | $0.150 | $0.600 | 262K |
| 148 | Mistral Small 3.1 24B | MMistral | 4.00/5.0 | $0.351 | $0.555 | 128K |
| 149 | Codestral 2508 | MMistral | 4.00/5.0 | $0.300 | $0.900 | 256K |
| 150 | MiniMax: MiniMax-01 | MMinimax | 4.00/5.0 | $0.200 | $1.10 | 1.0M |
| 151 | Gemini 2.5 Flash | GGoogle | 4.00/5.0 | $0.300 | $2.50 | 1.0M |
| 152 | Ministral 3 3B 2512 | MMistral | 3.67/5.0 | $0.100 | $0.100 | 131K |
| 153 | Ministral 3 8B 2512 | MMistral | 3.67/5.0 | $0.150 | $0.150 | 262K |
| 154 | Qwen: Qwen3 Coder 30B A3B Instruct | QQwen | 3.67/5.0 | $0.070 | $0.280 | 262K |
| 155 | Llama 4 Scout | MMeta | 3.67/5.0 | $0.100 | $0.300 | 1.3M |
| 156 | GPT-4.1 Nano | OOpenAI | 3.67/5.0 | $0.100 | $0.400 | 1.0M |
| 157 | Grok Code Fast 1 | XXAI | 3.67/5.0 | $0.200 | $1.50 | 256K |
| 158 | Mistral Small 3.2 24B | MMistral | 3.33/5.0 | $0.094 | $0.250 | 256K |
| 159 | Llama 4 Maverick | MMeta | 3.33/5.0 | $0.188 | $0.652 | 1.0M |
| 160 | MiniMax: MiniMax M2-her | MMinimax | 3.33/5.0 | $0.300 | $1.20 | 66K |
| 161 | GPT-4o | OOpenAI | 3.33/5.0 | $2.50 | $10.00 | 128K |
| 162 | IBM: Granite 4.0 Micro | IIbm-granite | 3.00/5.0 | $0.017 | $0.112 | 131K |
| 163 | GPT-4o-mini | OOpenAI | 3.00/5.0 | $0.150 | $0.600 | 128K |
| 164 | Sakana: Sakana Namazu | SSakana | 0.00/5.0 | $0.950 | $4.00 | 262K |
Pricing — top 5 for research
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