An up to date comparison of the best AI models
Last updated August 1, 2026.
MODELS
The current top model is Claude Fable 5, Anthropic's new tier above Opus, which leads most quality leaderboards right now. The new Opus 5 is also great and quite often all you need. The new Sonnet 5 is a great workhorse that I use for everything practical. Right behind Claude is OpenAI's brand-new GPT-5.6 family — Sol is the flagship (and the best at long-running agent tasks), Terra the everyday workhorse, Luna the cheap-and-fast option. Google is now officially behind. The much-hyped Gemini 3.5 Pro has been “coming soon” since May and still isn't out. 3.6 Flash underwhelms.
(Quick example: I asked the top version of all 3 to update this page for me. Gemini failed. Claude nailed it. GPT made very good points about how the page should focus on entirely different things now that we are in the agentic age. I might make those changes later, but the current page except this example is my edit of Claude’s draft.)
There are other models (Grok 4.5, GLM 2.5, Kimi K3), but you don't need them.
GENERAL TOOLS
AI is more than just the models, it is also the tools or scaffolding they come with. Claude has agentic tools like Cowork and Code, and integrations in for example Chrome, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook etc. ChatGPT now also has such integrations, and recently added “Work” to the existing “Codex” to match Claude’s Cowork and Code. I haven’t had time to really try the new “Work” function from ChatGPT, but I expect it might be on par with Claude Cowork and Perplexity Computer.
The main thing in ChatGPT’s favor these days is that Claude is very stingy on usage while ChatGPT is not. Gemini is integrated in all the Google products (as long as you pay the $20/month), but really the one tool that matters is Gemini Notebook (just renamed from NotebookLM). It is unique and impressive. You must try it, if you haven’t!
SPECIALIZED TOOLS
Perplexity.ai is still best for search. I literally never use Google Search anymore. Even free users get 3 daily pro searches and deep research reports! My obsession remains Perplexity Computer, which recently rebuilt this entire website from WordPress to AI-maintained code on Cloudflare. I use it a lot more than Claude Cowork and Code.
The image generation crown changed hands in April: ChatGPT's GPT Image 2 now tops the blind-vote leaderboards, especially for readable text, diagrams, and layouts. For photorealism and high-res editing (up to true 4K), Google's Nano Banana is still the one to beat.
I don’t make much video but Google Omni seems very good based on what little I’ve tried with it. See for example this from the prompt “me riding a unicorn through the swamp”:
If you are looking for a resource for learning how AI works and how to work with it, I recommend my Tulane Applied AI Literacy course that is available for free on YouTube.
