▪ MODEL ARENA · SEP 2026 MODEL WAR · UPDATED 2026-09-17
Four flagships shipped in 72 hours. Here's the board.
Claude Fable 5.1, GPT-6 Astra, Muse Spark 1.3, Gemini 3.8 Flash — 7 points apart on capability, 100× apart on price. Sort by what your workload actually needs. Vote for your pick; the crowd column is this browser's ballot box.
QUALITY KING
CLAUDE FABLE 5.1 · 100
SPEED DEMON
DEEPSEEK V4 FLASH · 200 T/S
CHEAPEST SEAT
DEEPSEEK V4 FLASH · $0.28/M
| # | MODEL | CROWD | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Claude Fable 5.1 Anthropic · Sep 2026 · 1M · Hardest agent work | 100 | 1525 | 81.6 | 53 | $50 | 2 | 0 |
| 2 | Claude Mythos 5 Anthropic · Jun 2026 · 1M · Ceiling (restricted) | 100 | 1531 | 78 | 56 | $50 | 2 | 0 |
| 3 | Claude Opus 5 Anthropic · Jul 2026 · 1M · Agentic coding value | 99 | 1522 | 78 | 103 | $25 | 4 | 0 |
| 4 | GPT-6 Astra OpenAI · Sep 2026 · 1.05M · Math + computer use | 98 | 1514 | 76.9 | 55 | $50 | 2 | 0 |
| 5 | GPT-5.6 Sol OpenAI · Jul 2026 · 1.05M · Frontier reasoning | 98 | 1514 | 76 | 96 | $30 | 3.3 | 0 |
| 6 | Claude Opus 4.8 Anthropic · May 2026 · 1M · Agents + computer use | 98 | 1512 | 76 | 72 | $25 | 3.9 | 0 |
| 7 | Kimi K3OPEN Moonshot AI · Jul 2026 · 1M · Open coding frontier | 97 | 1500 | 74 | 55 | $15 | 6.5 | 0 |
| 8 | Muse Spark 1.3 Meta · Sep 2026 · 1M · Coding value king | 96 | 1480 | 75.4 | 182 | $4.25 | 22.6 | 0 |
| 9 | Gemini 3.1 Pro Google · Apr 2026 · 1M · Science + long ctx | 96 | 1505 | 68.8 | 131 | $12 | 8 | 0 |
| 10 | Claude Sonnet 5 Anthropic · Jun 2026 · 1M · Daily driver | 93 | 1479 | 72 | 98 | $15 | 6.2 | 0 |
| 11 | GPT-5.6 Terra OpenAI · Jul 2026 · 1M · Balanced tier | 93 | 1489 | 70 | 118 | $12 | 7.8 | 0 |
| 12 | GLM-5.2OPEN Z.ai · Jun 2026 · 1M · Self-hostable speed | 91 | 1483 | 70 | 168 | $4.4 | 20.7 | 0 |
| 13 | Gemini 3.8 Flash Google · Sep 2026 · 1M · Cheap + fast | 90 | 1481 | 76.3 | 168 | $3.75 | 24 | 0 |
| 14 | Grok 4.5 SpaceXAI · Jul 2026 · 500K · Engineering focus | 88 | 1440 | 71 | 110 | $6 | 14.7 | 0 |
| 15 | GPT-5.6 Luna OpenAI · Jul 2026 · 1M · Cheap frontier | 83 | 1436 | 62 | 186 | $1.2 | 69.2 | 0 |
| 16 | DeepSeek V4 FlashOPEN DeepSeek · Apr 2026 · 1M · Price floor | 80 | 1380 | 68 | 200 | $0.28 | 285.7 | 0 |
| 17 | Llama 4 MaverickOPEN Meta · Apr 2025 · 128K · Open ecosystem | 80 | 1260 | 58 | 135 | $0.6 | 133.3 | 0 |
| 18 | Qwen 3.8 Max Alibaba · Sep 2026 · 1M · Agent workflows | 78 | 1420 | 66 | 95 | $4.8 | 16.3 | 0 |
| 19 | Gemma 4 27BOPEN Google · Apr 2026 · 128K · Self-host | 75 | 1351 | 60 | 142 | — | — | 0 |
| 20 | Claude 3.5 Haiku Anthropic · Oct 2024 · 200K · Speed + cost | 75 | 1230 | 55 | 172 | $4 | 18.8 | 0 |
| 21 | Quasar 438BOPEN Unknown · Sep 2026 · 256K · MoE value | 72 | 1300 | 60 | 90 | $1.5 | 48 | 0 |
| 22 | Llama 4 ScoutOPEN Meta · Apr 2025 · 10M · Longest context | 71 | 1195 | 52 | 198 | $0.4 | 177.5 | 0 |
METHOD
QUALITY = COMPOSITE 0–100 · ARENA = LMARENA ELO · CODING = AGENT INDEX · VALUE = QUALITY ÷ $/M OUT. CROWD = YOUR LOCAL BALLOT, STORED IN THIS BROWSER ONLY.
SOURCES · 2026-09-17
- ARTIFICIAL ANALYSIS INTELLIGENCE/CODING INDICES, SEP 2026
- LMARENA PUBLIC ELO SNAPSHOTS VIA INDEPENDENT ROUNDUPS
- VENDOR ANNOUNCEMENTS SEP 1–3 2026 (ANTHROPIC, OPENAI, GOOGLE, META, ALIBABA)
- PROVIDER PRICING PAGES (INPUT/OUTPUT $/M)
ROUTE YOUR WORK: FLASH FOR BULK · SPARK FOR CODE · FABLE/ASTRA FOR THE HARDEST 10% · READ THE THESIS →