Best Open-Source AI Models
Compare the strongest open-weights models — self-hostable, fine-tunable and free of per-token API fees. Ranked by intelligence among openly-licensed models.Rankings combine multiple benchmark scores weighted by relevance to this use case. Updated August 2026.
Why This Matters
Best Open-Source AI Models is one of the most common AI workloads — and the best model depends heavily on the specific task. A model that excels at creative writing may struggle with structured data extraction, and vice versa.
We built this use-case ranking by combining multiple benchmark categories with weights tuned to match real-world usage patterns. For best open-source ai models, the score emphasizes the benchmarks that matter most: task accuracy, output quality, and consistency. Speed and cost are factored in but secondary to quality.
All scores are from public independent benchmarks. For a broader view across all tasks, see the overall LLM leaderboard or the expert picks page.
Quick Answer
The best AI models for best open-source ai models are:1. GLM-5.1 (Z.ai, score: 72.0), 2. Qwen3.8 Flash Next (Alibaba, score: 61.5), 3. Kimi K3 (Moonshot AI, score: 59.7).
| # | Model | Provider | Score | Speed | Price (output) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GLM-5.1 | Z.ai | 72.0 | 74 t/s | $4.4/M |
| 2 | Qwen3.8 Flash Next | Alibaba | 61.5 | 168 t/s | $0.4/M |
| 3 | Kimi K3 | Moonshot AI | 59.7 | 37 t/s | $15/M |
| 4 | GLM-5.3 Flash | Z.ai | 58.0 | 182 t/s | $0.3/M |
| 5 | DeepSeek V4 Pro | DeepSeek | 53.2 | 66 t/s | $0.87/M |
| 6 | GLM-5.2 | Z.ai | 52.6 | 164 t/s | $4.29/M |
| 7 | DeepSeek V4 Flash | DeepSeek | 51.8 | 113 t/s | $0.28/M |
| 8 | Granite 4.2 30B Instruct | IBM | 51.0 | 78 t/s | $1.2/M |
| 9 | GPT-oss-120B | OpenAI | 47.0 | 240 t/s | $0.4/M |
| 10 | Kimi K2.6 | Moonshot AI | 45.1 | 40 t/s | $4/M |
| 11 | Qwen3 8 2 4t A95b | Alibaba | 45.0 | 85 t/s | $2/M |
| 12 | Glm 5 | Z.ai | 45.0 | 60 t/s | $3/M |
| 13 | Deepseek V4 Pro 0424 | DeepSeek | 45.0 | 60 t/s | $1.1/M |
| 14 | Deepseek V4 Pro 0424 High | DeepSeek | 45.0 | 60 t/s | $1.1/M |
| 15 | Qwen3 6 Max | Alibaba | 45.0 | 85 t/s | $2/M |