Best AI for Reasoning in 2026

Ranked by GPQA Diamond, graduate-level physics, chemistry and biology questions that require multi-step reasoning. This is the benchmark to watch when your product lives or dies on correctness.

Data updated: August 11, 2026

#ModelVendorArena EloSWE-benchPrice in/out ($/M)Context
1 Claude Mythos Anthropic 1478 93.9% $25 / $125 1M
2 Claude Fable 5 Anthropic 1492 77% $10 / $50 1M
3 Claude Mythos 5 Anthropic 1493 78% $10 / $50 1M
4 Kimi K3 Moonshot AI 1478 75.5% $3 / $15 1M
5 OpenAI o4 OpenAI 1438 72% $12 / $48 256K
6 Gemini 3 Deep Think Google DeepMind 1429 64% $14 / $56 1M
7 OpenAI o3 OpenAI 1418 69.1% $2 / $8 200K
8 OpenAI o1 OpenAI 1380 48.9% $15 / $60 200K
9 Grok 4 Heavy xAI 1391 55% $15 / $60 256K
10 OpenAI o4-mini OpenAI 1362 60% $1.1 / $4.4 200K
11 DeepSeek V4 DeepSeek 1395 62% $1.74 / $3.48 1M
12 Gemini 3 Ultra Google DeepMind 1441 66% $18 / $72 3M
13 DeepSeek R1 DeepSeek 1389 49.2% $0.7 / $2.5 128K
14 GPT-5.5 OpenAI 1432 66% $5 / $30 600K
15 Claude Opus 4.8 Anthropic 1435 67% $5 / $25 1M

Full AI model comparison

Frequently asked questions

What does GPQA actually measure?

GPQA Diamond is a set of PhD-level science questions written so that even experts with internet access find them hard. It is the cleanest signal we have for deep reasoning rather than memorization.

When do I need a reasoning model?

For multi-step problems where a wrong intermediate step ruins the answer, math, complex analysis, legal or scientific review, agent planning. For summaries, drafting and chat, a cheaper general model is usually enough.