When people think of AI, they often think of ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot. But these are just the tip of the iceberg.
The world of Large Language Models (LLMs) includes dozens of powerful models from companies around the globe—each with different strengths, trade-offs, and ways you can access them.
Click any model on the quadrant to learn more about it.
Model Categories
Frontier Proprietary
Open Weights
Specialized / Niche
Key Terms
Large Language Model (LLM)
An AI trained on massive amounts of text to understand and generate human-like language.
Open Weights
The model's learned parameters can be downloaded, run on your own hardware, and fine-tuned (additional training) for your specific needs.
Proprietary
You can only access the model through the company's website or API. The model itself stays on their servers.
Context Window
How much text the model can "remember" at once. A 128K window can hold roughly a 300-page book.
Parameters
The number of adjustable values in the model. More parameters generally means more capable, but also more expensive to run.
Training
The process of teaching a model by exposing it to massive amounts of data. Training requires enormous computing power and can cost millions of dollars.
Inference
Using a trained model to generate responses. When you chat with an AI, you're running inference. Much cheaper than training, but still requires significant computing power.
API (Application Programming Interface)
A way for software to talk to the AI. Developers use APIs to build apps powered by AI. API access is typically priced per token—you pay for what you use.
GPT-5.2
OpenAI
Frontier Proprietary
Best-in-class general reasoning & ecosystem integration
The model behind ChatGPT. GPT-5 excels at complex reasoning, coding, writing, and multi-step problem solving. It's deeply integrated into Microsoft products and has the largest developer ecosystem.
Access
API / ChatGPT
Context
128K tokens
Multimodal
Text, Images, Audio
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Gemini 3 Pro
Google DeepMind
Frontier Proprietary
Multimodal champion with massive context window
Google's flagship model can process text, images, video, and audio natively. Its 1 million token context window means it can analyze entire codebases or books in a single conversation.
Access
API / Gemini App
Context
1M tokens
Multimodal
Text, Images, Video, Audio
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Opus 4.5
Anthropic
Frontier Proprietary
Nuanced writing & reliable agentic coding
Known for thoughtful, nuanced responses and strong safety alignment. Claude excels at long-form writing, complex analysis, and working as an autonomous coding assistant that can use tools and browse the web.
Access
API / Claude.ai
Context
200K tokens
Multimodal
Text, Images, PDFs
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Grok 4.1
xAI
Frontier Proprietary
Real-time world knowledge via X integration
Created by Elon Musk's xAI, Grok has unique access to real-time data from X (formerly Twitter). This lets it answer questions about current events and trending topics that other models can't access.
Access
API / X / Grok.com
Context
2M tokens (Fast)
Multimodal
Text, Images, Voice
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Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft
Frontier Proprietary
Partnership model: integrates others' AI into Microsoft products
Unlike the others on this chart, Microsoft doesn't build its own large language models. Instead, Copilot is powered by partnerships—primarily with OpenAI (GPT models). This lets Microsoft embed AI across Office, Windows, Edge, and GitHub without the massive R&D investment of training frontier models.
Powered By
OpenAI GPT models
Access
Windows, Office, Edge, Bing
Strategy
Partnership, not training
Small Models
Phi series (in-house)
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Llama 4 Maverick
Meta
Open Weights
The industry standard for local deployment
Meta's open-weight model that you can download and run yourself. Maverick uses a "mixture of experts" architecture—only activating 17B of its 400B parameters per query, making it efficient yet powerful.
Access
Download / Self-host
Parameters
17B active / 400B total
Context
1M tokens
License
Llama Community
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DeepSeek V3.2
DeepSeek (China)
Open Weights
Massive efficiency with frontier-level reasoning
A Chinese model that shocked the industry by matching GPT-4 level performance at a fraction of the training cost. Released under the permissive MIT license, it's become a favorite for researchers and companies seeking cost-effective AI.
Access
Download / Self-host
Parameters
37B active / 671B total
Context
128K tokens
License
MIT (fully open)
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Qwen 3
Alibaba (China)
Open Weights
Dominant in math, coding & multilingual tasks
Alibaba's Qwen family has become the most downloaded open model in the world. Trained on 36 trillion tokens across 119 languages, it excels at mathematical reasoning and code generation.
Access
Download / Self-host
Parameters
22B active / 235B total
Languages
119 languages
License
Apache 2.0 (open)
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GPT-OSS
OpenAI
Open Weights
OpenAI's first open weights since 2019—reasoning-focused
In August 2025, OpenAI surprised everyone by releasing open-weight models for the first time since GPT-2. Available under the permissive Apache 2.0 license, these reasoning-focused models can run on a single GPU. A major strategic shift after years of being called "ClosedAI."
Access
Download / Self-host
Sizes
120B and 20B variants
Hardware
1 GPU (80GB) or 16GB RAM
License
Apache 2.0 (fully open)
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Gemma 3
Google DeepMind
Open Weights
Google's open model—multimodal with 128K context
Google's lightweight open models built from the same technology as Gemini. Gemma 3 supports images and text input, handles 140+ languages, and can run on everything from phones to gaming GPUs. Available in sizes from 270M to 27B parameters.
Access
Download / Self-host
Sizes
270M to 27B parameters
Context
128K tokens
Features
Multimodal, 140+ languages
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Mistral Small 3
Mistral AI (France)
Specialized
Extreme speed for low-latency applications
A French company's speed-optimized model that generates 150 tokens per second. Small enough to run on a single GPU or a MacBook with 32GB RAM, yet competitive with models 3x its size.
Access
Download / Self-host
Parameters
24B
Speed
~150 tokens/sec
License
Apache 2.0 (open)
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Phi-4
Microsoft
Specialized
High-end reasoning in a tiny, mobile-friendly package
Microsoft's "small language model" proves that bigger isn't always better. At just 3.8B parameters, Phi-4 rivals much larger models on math and reasoning—small enough to run on a phone.
Access
Download / Self-host
Parameters
3.8B - 14B
Best For
Math, Reasoning, Mobile
License
MIT (fully open)
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Command R+
Cohere
Specialized
Optimized specifically for Enterprise RAG
Built for businesses that need AI to answer questions from their own documents. Command R+ specializes in "retrieval-augmented generation"—finding relevant info from databases and citing its sources.
Access
API only
Context
128K tokens
Best For
Enterprise search & RAG
Languages
10 business languages
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Perplexity
Perplexity AI
Specialized
AI-powered search engine with citations
Perplexity isn't a model—it's a search product built on top of multiple models (including Claude and GPT). Their innovation is combining AI with real-time web search, always citing sources. Think of it as "Google meets ChatGPT."
Type
Product, not a model
Powered By
Claude, GPT, + own models
Best For
Research & fact-finding
Key Feature
Always cites sources
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