Best LLMs for coding
Models with head-to-head Design Arena results on code tasks. 94 of 338 catalog models match as of July 2026.
- 94
- Models
- $0.031
- Input from /1M
- 10M
- Max context
- Jun 16, 2026
- Newest release
94 models in this catalog are viable for coding work, priced anywhere from $0 (three free entries, including Nemotron 3 Ultra free) up to $15/$75 per M tokens for Claude Opus 4.1. The newest addition is GLM 5.2 (June 16, 2026), running a 1,048,576-token context window at $0.93/$3.00 per M and ranked #1 on design_arena's 3D benchmark with an Elo of 1376. Claude Opus 4.8 leads androidnative generation (rank 1, Elo 1343), and DeepSeek V4 Pro delivers 3D rank 7 (Elo 1327) at $0.435/$0.87 — proof that frontier scores don't require frontier prices. If you're picking a model for a real coding workload, the spread between cheapest paid and most expensive paid option is roughly 500x on input price alone, so the tradeoffs below matter more than any single leaderboard slot.
Top picks
GLM 5.2
Newest model in the set (2026-06-16), 1,048,576-token context, and rank 1 on design_arena's 3D benchmark (Elo 1376) at $0.93 input / $3.00 output per M tokens — on OpenKey that's $0.958/$3.09 after the 3% fee. Good default if you want current-generation quality without paying Opus-tier prices.
DeepSeek V4 Pro
$0.435 input / $0.87 output per M ($0.448/$0.896 on OpenKey) with a 3D rank of 7 (Elo 1327) — within 50 Elo points of the category leader for a fraction of the cost. Text-only, 1,048,576-token context, released 2026-04-24.
Claude Opus 4.8
Rank 1 on androidnative generation (Elo 1343) with full image+file input support. At $5/$25 per M ($5.15/$25.75 on OpenKey) it's not cheap, but it's the top pick when the coding task involves multimodal context and mobile-native code output specifically.
All 94 models
Full catalog →GLM 5.2Z.ai1.0Mctx 1.0M · inout
Kimi K2.7 CodeMoonshot AI262Kctx 262K · inout
Claude Fable 5Anthropic1Mctx 1M · inout
Nex-N2-ProNex262Kctx 262K · inout
Nemotron 3 UltraNVIDIA1Mctx 1M · inout
Nemotron 3 Ultra (free)FreeNVIDIA1MFreeFreectx 1M · inFreeoutFree
MiniMax M3MiniMax1.0Mctx 1.0M · inout
Step 3.7 FlashStepFun256Kctx 256K · inout
Claude Opus 4.8Anthropic1Mctx 1M · inout
Qwen3.7 MaxQwen1Mctx 1M · inout
Gemini 3.5 FlashGoogle1.0Mctx 1.0M · inout
Grok 4.3xAI1Mctx 1M · inout
DeepSeek V4 FlashDeepSeek1.0Mctx 1.0M · inout
DeepSeek V4 ProDeepSeek1.0Mctx 1.0M · inout
GPT-5.5OpenAI1.1Mctx 1.1M · inout
MiMo-V2.5Xiaomi1.0Mctx 1.0M · inout
MiMo-V2.5-ProXiaomi1.0Mctx 1.0M · inout
Kimi K2.6Moonshot AI262Kctx 262K · inout
Claude Opus 4.7Anthropic1Mctx 1M · inout
GLM 5.1Z.ai203Kctx 203K · inout
Qwen3.6 PlusQwen1Mctx 1M · inout
Trinity Large ThinkingArcee AI262Kctx 262K · inout
GLM 5V TurboZ.ai203Kctx 203K · inout
MiniMax M2.7MiniMax205Kctx 205K · inout
GLM 5 TurboZ.ai262Kctx 262K · inout
GPT-5.4OpenAI1.1Mctx 1.1M · inout
Mercury 2Inception128Kctx 128K · inout
Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite PreviewGoogle1.0Mctx 1.0M · inout
GPT-5.3-CodexOpenAI400Kctx 400K · inout
Gemini 3.1 Pro PreviewGoogle1.0Mctx 1.0M · inout
Claude Sonnet 4.6Anthropic1Mctx 1M · inout
Qwen3.5 397B A17BQwen256Kctx 256K · inout
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15Qwen1Mctx 1M · inout
MiniMax M2.5MiniMax205Kctx 205K · inout
GLM 5Z.ai203Kctx 203K · inout
Claude Opus 4.6Anthropic1Mctx 1M · inout
Kimi K2.5Moonshot AI262Kctx 262K · inout
GLM 4.7 FlashZ.ai203Kctx 203K · inout
MiniMax M2.1MiniMax205Kctx 205K · inout
GLM 4.7Z.ai203Kctx 203K · inout
Gemini 3 Flash PreviewGoogle1.0Mctx 1.0M · inout
GPT-5.2OpenAI400Kctx 400K · inout
Ministral 3 14B 2512Mistral AI262Kctx 262K · inout
Ministral 3 3B 2512Mistral AI131Kctx 131K · inout
Ministral 3 8B 2512Mistral AI262Kctx 262K · inout
DeepSeek V3.2DeepSeek131Kctx 131K · inout
Mistral Large 3 2512Mistral AI262Kctx 262K · inout
Claude Opus 4.5Anthropic200Kctx 200K · inout
GPT-5.1OpenAI400Kctx 400K · inout
GPT-5.1-CodexOpenAI400Kctx 400K · inout
GPT-5.1-Codex-MiniOpenAI400Kctx 400K · inout
MiniMax M2MiniMax205Kctx 205K · inout
Claude Haiku 4.5Anthropic200Kctx 200K · inout
GLM 4.6Z.ai203Kctx 203K · inout
Claude Sonnet 4.5Anthropic1Mctx 1M · inout
DeepSeek V3.2 ExpDeepSeek164Kctx 164K · inout
Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite Preview 09-2025Google1.0Mctx 1.0M · inout
Qwen3 MaxQwen262Kctx 262K · inout
DeepSeek V3.1 TerminusDeepSeek164Kctx 164K · inout
Kimi K2 0905Moonshot AI262Kctx 262K · inout
DeepSeek V3.1DeepSeek164Kctx 164K · inout
Mistral Medium 3.1Mistral AI131Kctx 131K · inout
GPT-5OpenAI400Kctx 400K · inout
GPT-5 MiniOpenAI400Kctx 400K · inout
GPT-5 NanoOpenAI400Kctx 400K · inout
Claude Opus 4.1Anthropic200Kctx 200K · inout
gpt-oss-120bOpenAI131Kctx 131K · inout
gpt-oss-120b (free)FreeOpenAI131KFreeFreectx 131K · inFreeoutFree
Codestral 2508Mistral AI256Kctx 256K · inout
Qwen3 235B A22B Thinking 2507Qwen262Kctx 262K · inout
GLM 4.5Z.ai131Kctx 131K · inout
GLM 4.5 AirZ.ai131Kctx 131K · inout
Qwen3 Coder 480B A35BQwen1.0Mctx 1.0M · inout
Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B (free)FreeQwen1.0MFreeFreectx 1.0M · inFreeoutFree
Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507Qwen262Kctx 262K · inout
Kimi K2 0711Moonshot AI131Kctx 131K · inout
Mistral Small 3.2 24BMistral AI128Kctx 128K · inout
Gemini 2.5 FlashGoogle1.0Mctx 1.0M · inout
Gemini 2.5 ProGoogle1.0Mctx 1.0M · inout
R1 0528DeepSeek164Kctx 164K · inout
Claude Opus 4Anthropic200Kctx 200K · inout
Claude Sonnet 4Anthropic1Mctx 1M · inout
Mistral Medium 3Mistral AI131Kctx 131K · inout
Qwen3 235B A22BQwen131Kctx 131K · inout
Qwen3 30B A3BQwen131Kctx 131K · inout
o3OpenAI200Kctx 200K · inout
o4 MiniOpenAI200Kctx 200K · inout
GPT-4.1OpenAI1.0Mctx 1.0M · inout
GPT-4.1 MiniOpenAI1.0Mctx 1.0M · inout
GPT-4.1 NanoOpenAI1.0Mctx 1.0M · inout
Llama 4 MaverickMeta AI1.0Mctx 1.0M · inout
Llama 4 ScoutMeta AI10Mctx 10M · inout
DeepSeek V3DeepSeek131Kctx 131K · inout
GPT-4oOpenAI128Kctx 128K · inout
Prices per 1M tokens, flat 3% fee included. Hover or tap a price for the math.
How to choose
First tradeoff: benchmark specialization vs. general coding use. This catalog's benchmarks are design_arena categories (3D, SVG, webapps, gamedev, androidnative, etc.) — a model ranked 1 on androidnative (Claude Opus 4.8) isn't necessarily your best pick for SVG generation, where Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview sits at rank 2 (Elo 1347) for $2/$12 per M. Match the benchmark to your actual task. Second: price-to-context tradeoff. DeepSeek V4 Flash is $0.09/$0.18 per M with a 1,048,576-token window, cheapest by far among frontier-context models, but its best benchmark rank (svg, 23rd, Elo 1216) trails the leaders. Third: modality. If your coding workflow needs image or file input (screenshots, diagrams, PDFs), you're limited to text+image or text+image+file models like Claude Opus 4.8 or GPT-5.5 — pure text->text models like GLM 5.2 or DeepSeek V4 Pro won't take that input regardless of benchmark score.
Questions
- What's the cheapest model in this coding list?
- Among paid models, gpt-oss-120b is cheapest at $0.03 input / $0.15 output per M tokens ($0.0309/$0.1545 on OpenKey after the 3% fee). There are also 3 free models in the set, including Nemotron 3 Ultra (free), which carries the same 1,000,000-token context and benchmark rank as its paid version but at $0 cost.
- Is there a free option that's actually competitive?
- Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) mirrors the paid Nemotron 3 Ultra exactly — same 1,000,000-token context, same design_arena 3D rank of 40 (Elo 1213). It won't top any leaderboard, but for zero cost it's a reasonable starting point before you commit to a paid model.
- How much more does the top-ranked model cost versus a mid-tier one?
- GLM 5.2 (3D rank 1, Elo 1376) runs $0.93/$3.00 per M. DeepSeek V4 Pro (3D rank 7, Elo 1327) runs $0.435/$0.87 per M — less than half the price for a 49-point Elo gap. Whether that gap matters depends on how sensitive your use case is to the top few ranks versus the top 10.