Reasoning
Claude Opus 5.5
Anthropic
Anthropic's recommended starting point for most serious work: long-running agentic coding and knowledge work, with a 1M token context window.
- Anthropic
- Vision
- Tool calling
AI model category
General purpose AI models
The workhorses: writing, summarizing, answering questions, extracting data and calling tools.
- 21 models
General purpose models cover most business AI work: drafting replies, summarizing documents, extracting fields, classifying requests and calling tools on behalf of a user. The differences between them are in speed, price, context size and how reliably they follow instructions and formats.
Many providers offer the same family in several sizes. The smaller sizes are often good enough for high-volume, simple tasks and cost a fraction of the flagship.
General purpose
All general purpose ai models
General purpose
Claude Sonnet 5
Anthropic
Anthropic's balance of speed and intelligence: a strong everyday model for assistants, document work, tool calling and coding.
- Anthropic
- Vision
- Tool calling
General purpose
Claude Haiku 4.5
Anthropic
Anthropic's fastest and lowest-cost Claude model, with near-frontier intelligence for high-volume and real-time work.
- Anthropic
- Vision
- Tool calling
General purpose
Gemini 3.8 Flash
Google's most capable Flash model, stable since September 2026, for agents, software engineering and enterprise workflows with full multimodal input.
- Vision
- Tool calling
General purpose
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite
Google's lowest-cost current Gemini model for high-throughput work such as sub-agent tasks and document parsing.
- Vision
- Tool calling
Open weights
Gemma 4
Google's open-weight model family under Apache 2.0, in sizes from phone-friendly to 31B, with image input and function calling.
- Open weights
- Vision
- Tool calling
Open weights
Llama 4 Scout
Meta
An open-weight Llama 4 model with image input and a very long context window, for teams that want to host a capable model themselves.
- Meta
- Open weights
- Vision
- Tool calling
Open weights
Llama 4 Maverick
Meta
The larger Llama 4 open-weight model, with image input and a 1 million token context window, for self-hosted assistants and analysis.
- Meta
- Open weights
- Vision
- Tool calling
Open weights
Llama 3.3 70B
Meta
An older, text-only open-weight Llama model with tool use and a 128K token window, still widely hosted and well understood.
- Meta
- Open weights
- Tool calling
General purpose
Meta Muse Spark
Meta
Meta's newer proprietary model family, offered through the Meta Model API, with text, image, video and PDF input, tool calling and a 1 million token window.
- Meta
- Vision
- Tool calling
General purpose
Mistral Large 3
Mistral AI
Mistral's open-weight general-purpose flagship under Apache 2.0, with image input, tool calling, structured outputs and a 256K token window.
- Mistral AI
- Open weights
- Vision
- Tool calling
Open weights
Mistral Small 4
Mistral AI
Mistral's efficient open-weight model under Apache 2.0, one hybrid model for instructions, reasoning and coding, with tool calling and a 256K window.
- Mistral AI
- Open weights
- Tool calling
Coding
Mistral Medium 3.5
Mistral AI
A newer open-weight Mistral model for agent and coding work, with image input, tool calling, structured outputs and a 256K window.
- Mistral AI
- Open weights
- Vision
- Tool calling
General purpose
GPT-6 Sol
OpenAI
The middle model of the GPT-6 family, positioned for complex coding and agentic workflows at a mid price level.
- OpenAI
- Vision
- Tool calling
General purpose
GPT-6 Luna
OpenAI
OpenAI's most efficient model for focused, high-volume tasks, with vision, tool calling and structured outputs at the lowest price level in the family.
- OpenAI
- Vision
- Tool calling
General purpose
GPT-4.1
OpenAI
An older OpenAI model described as its smartest non-reasoning model, strong at following instructions and calling tools, with a very long context window.
- OpenAI
- Vision
- Tool calling
General purpose
GPT-4o mini
OpenAI
A compact, low-cost older OpenAI model for focused tasks, with vision, tool calling and structured outputs and a 128K token window.
- OpenAI
- Vision
- Tool calling
General purpose
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
DeepSeek
DeepSeek's default, best-value model: open weights under MIT, image input, tool calling, JSON output, optional thinking and a 1 million token window.
- DeepSeek
- Open weights
- Vision
- Tool calling
Reasoning
Qwen3.8-Max
Alibaba Cloud
Alibaba's current Qwen flagship for long autonomous coding and professional work, with image and video input, tool calling, JSON Schema output and a 1 million token window.
- Alibaba Cloud
- Vision
- Tool calling
Reasoning
Grok 4.7
xAI
xAI's current flagship for coding, agent tasks and knowledge work, with image input, tool calling, structured outputs, reasoning effort levels and a 500K window.
- xAI
- Vision
- Tool calling
General purpose
Cohere Command A+
Cohere
Cohere's enterprise flagship for multimodal, multilingual agent tasks, with 48 languages, tool calling, JSON output and open weights under Apache 2.0.
- Cohere
- Open weights
- Vision
- Tool calling
How to choose
How to choose in this category
Pick two or three candidates from different providers and test them on the same set of real examples. Measure accuracy, format errors, speed and cost per thousand requests. Then consider data policy, region and whether you may want to switch providers later.
For high volume, try the smallest model first and move up only where quality falls short.
Other categories
Browse other categories
Keep exploring
Related on ExecMedia
Related services
View all related services- LLM integration Add a large language model to software you already have, with the guardrails, costs and logging handled.
- AI chatbots Website and messaging chatbots that answer common questions well and hand everything else to a person.
- AI Product Development AI agents, knowledge assistants, copilots and document automation built into the way your team already works.
- AI copilots AI helpers built into your product or internal tools that draft, summarize and suggest while people decide.
- AI workflows Step-by-step automations where AI handles the reading, sorting and drafting inside a process you control.
- AI agents AI that takes actions in your systems, such as qualifying leads or processing requests, with people checking the results.
Solutions
View all solutions- AI support agent An assistant that answers routine questions from your own content, checks orders and hands anything else to a person.
- Email triage Sort a shared inbox by topic and urgency, pull out the key details and draft replies for a person to send.
- AI-assisted content workflows Briefs, first drafts, edits and repurposing in a workflow where people set the angle and approve every word.
- AI lead qualification Score, research and route every new inquiry so your team talks to the best leads first.
- Automated quoting Draft accurate quotes and proposals from a request, your price rules and past work, for a person to approve.
- Scheduling and drafting automation Turn one piece of content into posts for each channel, schedule them and track results, with approval before anything goes out.
Industries
View all industries- Vacation rentals Booking websites, owner and guest portals, turnover scheduling and guest messaging for rental operators.
- Ecommerce Online stores, product data cleanup, support assistants, price monitoring and order automation for online retailers.
- Education and elearning Course platforms, student portals, content workflows and AI tutoring assistants for schools and training companies.
- SaaS and startups MVPs, subscription billing, AI features, multi-tenant platforms and scaling support for founders and product teams.
- Hospitality and travel Booking sites, guest messaging, review analysis and multilingual content for hotels, tour operators and travel businesses.
Case studies
View all case studiesGuides and articles
View all guides and articles- What can AI do for a small business? Practical AI uses for small businesses, from inboxes and documents to customer support, with costs and first steps.
- Prompt writing basics for business teams How to write prompts that get consistent, useful results from AI tools, with templates your team can reuse.
- AI chatbot vs AI agent What separates a chatbot that answers from an agent that acts, and when you need each.
MCP servers
View all mcp servers- Communication Servers for chat, email, SMS and phone, so AI can read messages, draft replies and send notifications.
- Ecommerce Servers that connect AI to online stores and marketplaces, for products, orders, customers and store content.
- Amazon Selling Partner API Amazon's SP-API MCP server helps sellers and developers explore the Selling Partner API, generate code and run API calls, with approval for writes.
- BigCommerce BigCommerce's official Storefront MCP, in beta, lets AI shopping assistants browse the catalog, build carts and hand shoppers to checkout.
- Discord A community MCP server that lets AI read and send Discord messages, react, send direct messages and manage channels through a bot.
- Gmail Google's own Gmail MCP server lets AI search and read threads, manage labels and create drafts. It has no send tool.
Glossary terms
View all glossary terms- Fine-tuning Fine-tuning is further training an existing AI model on your own examples so it learns a specific style, format or task.
- Large language model A large language model, or LLM, is an AI model trained on vast amounts of text that can understand and generate language, and often images and code.
- Prompt A prompt is the instruction and context you give an AI model to get the output you want.
- System prompt A system prompt is the standing set of instructions an application gives an AI model, defining its role, rules and style for every conversation.
- AI copilot An AI copilot is an assistant built into a tool people already use, which suggests, drafts and explains while the person stays in control.
- Artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence is the broad field of building software that performs tasks that normally need human judgment, such as understanding language or images.