Reasoning
Claude Fable 5.1
Anthropic
The top tier of the Claude family, for the most demanding reasoning and long-horizon agent work, priced above Opus.
- Anthropic
- Vision
- Tool calling
AI model category
Reasoning AI models
For work that needs careful thought: analysis, planning, long documents and agents that take several steps.
- 10 models
Reasoning models spend extra computation thinking before they answer. That makes them better at multi-step problems, such as reviewing a contract against a playbook, planning an agent's next action or checking figures across several documents. It also makes them slower and more expensive per request than fast general-purpose models.
Most business systems use a reasoning model only for the steps that need it, and a faster model for everything else. We test both on real examples before choosing.
Reasoning
All reasoning ai models
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
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
Reasoning
Gemini 3.1 Pro
Google's most advanced Gemini model for reasoning, software engineering and agent work, reading text, images, audio, video and PDFs. Available as a preview.
- Vision
- Tool calling
Reasoning
GPT-6 Astra
OpenAI
OpenAI's most capable model, built for the hardest end-to-end work: complex reasoning, coding, computer use and research.
- OpenAI
- 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
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
DeepSeek V4 Pro
DeepSeek
DeepSeek's model for demanding reasoning and agent work, with thinking effort levels, tool calling, JSON output and a 1 million token window.
- DeepSeek
- Open weights
- 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
How to choose
How to choose in this category
Start with the hardest example you have, not the average one. If a fast model already handles it well, you do not need a reasoning model. If it fails, try a reasoning model on the same example and compare quality, time and cost per request.
Check how the provider controls thinking effort. Several models let you set how much reasoning to spend per request, which helps keep cost and response time under control.
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Glossary terms
View all glossary terms- Reasoning model A reasoning model is an AI model that works through a problem step by step before answering, trading speed and cost for better results on hard tasks.
- AI agent An AI agent is software that uses a language model to plan steps, call tools and act toward a goal, instead of only answering one question.
- Context window A context window is the maximum amount of text, measured in tokens, that an AI model can consider at once, including the question, documents and its answer.
- MCP server An MCP server is a program or hosted service that exposes a system's data and actions as tools that AI assistants can use through the Model Context Protocol.
- Model Context Protocol The Model Context Protocol, or MCP, is an open standard for connecting AI assistants to external tools and data in a consistent way.
- Tool calling Tool calling is when an AI model asks the application to run a tool, such as a search or database lookup, and then uses the result in its answer.