Frontier AI Labs

Makes ChatGPT and the GPT model family — the company most people mean when they say “AI” for the first time.

• GPT-6 Astra— The new flagship (launched 3 September 2026): deep reasoning, agentic computer-use automation, top-tier coding and research work.Paid only
• GPT-5.6 Sol— Prior-generation flagship, still excellent for complex professional and coding work when Astra isn’t needed.Paid only
• GPT-5.6 Terra— Balanced mid-tier model for everyday reasoning and coding at lower cost; included on paid plans (Go and up), not on the free plan.Paid only
• GPT-5.6 Luna— The fast, everyday chat model — ChatGPT’s free plan includes unlimited text chat with it, with limited image and voice access.Free
• gpt-oss-120b / gpt-oss-20b— OpenAI’s own open-weight models — download and run them on your own hardware.Free, open-weight

• Note: Specialized and restricted models (cybersecurity research, life-sciences research, image and voice generation) exist but need vetted access or a paid plan — they are not general-use free tools.
• Note: Sora (AI video) is discontinued: the app shut down 26 April 2026 and the API follows on 24 September 2026. OpenAI currently has no video-generation product.

Makes Claude and Claude Code — known for reasoning quality and for being the most safety-research-forward of the major labs.

• Claude Fable 5.1— The newest public flagship (launched 1 September 2026), Anthropic’s top pick for demanding reasoning and long agentic tasks.Paid only
• Claude Opus 5— The recommended model for most complex agentic coding and enterprise work.Paid only
• Claude Sonnet 5— The default workhorse — best balance of speed and intelligence; included on Claude.ai’s free plan on a rolling usage window.Free with limits
• Claude Haiku 4.5— The fastest, cheapest tier, still near-frontier for everyday tasks; also included on the free plan alongside Sonnet 5.Free with limits
• Claude Mythos 5.1— Anthropic’s highest-capability model, restricted to vetted cybersecurity and bio-research organizations — not public.Paid only
• Claude Code— The agentic coding tool built on the models above; no free tier of its own, bundled from the Pro plan up.Paid only

Makes Gemini, and has the most free-tier-friendly lineup of the major labs.

• Gemini 3.1 Pro— Flagship for complex reasoning, coding and creative work — free with limits in the Gemini app, paid-only via the API.Free with limits
• Gemini 3.8 Flash (and the 3.5 / 3.6 Flash-Lite tiers below it)— Fast, capable everyday and agentic-workflow models, free through both the Gemini app and Google AI Studio’s API, with rate limits.Free
• Gemini 3.1 Deep Think— An extended-reasoning mode for hard research and engineering problems, on the Google AI Ultra plan.Paid only
• Nano Banana / Nano Banana Pro— Image generation and editing — free with limits in the Gemini app and Search; full API access is mostly paid.Free with limits
• Gemma 4— Google’s fully open-weight family, sized from phone-friendly to workstation-class — download from Hugging Face, Kaggle or Ollama.Free, open-weight

• Note: Veo (video) and Lyria (music) generation exist but are paid-plan features, not free.

Meta now runs two separate model lines worth knowing apart.

• Muse Spark 1.3— Meta’s new proprietary flagship (launched 2 September 2026), powering the Meta AI app, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Ray-Ban/Oakley Meta glasses; free to chat with inside Meta’s own apps, API paid-only.Free with limits
• Llama 4 Scout / Maverick / 4.5— Meta’s open-weight line — no longer the frontier priority but still actively maintained; download and self-host.Free, open-weight

• Note: Meta’s own hosted API has no free tier for Llama either. If you want Llama without your own hardware, a third-party host with a free tier (OpenRouter, Groq) is the practical free option, not Meta directly.

Formerly xAI — merged into SpaceX in February 2026 and rebranded as SpaceXAI in July 2026. The Grok product name didn’t change; the company behind it did.

• Grok 4.6— Current flagship: agentic tool use and configurable reasoning depth. The free web tier does not include it — only an older, lesser model with unspecified limits.Paid only
• Grok Build 0.1— A dedicated coding-agent model, bundled into all plans including free as of August 2026.Free with limits

• Note: Grok Imagine (image and video generation) and the full Voice API are paid-only; basic voice chat is included free in the app.
• Note: Of the five major labs this is the least free-tier-friendly: there is no free API tier at all, and you must load paid credits before the API answers any request.

A French lab known for open-weight releases alongside its paid flagship line.

• Mistral Large 3— Flagship for complex reasoning and agentic tasks — paid via API, usable free with limits in Le Chat, which also includes $10 a month of free API credit.Free with limits
• Mistral Small 4, Devstral 2 (coding agent) and Pixtral (vision)— Downloadable and self-hostable under permissive licenses.Free, open-weight

A Chinese lab that moved past its well-known V3/R1 naming to a new V4 generation in 2026, generally released with open weights.

• DeepSeek-V4-Pro— Current flagship for general and agentic tasks with adjustable reasoning effort — open weights on Hugging Face, also available paid via API.Free, open-weight
• DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash— Smaller, faster sibling with native image understanding.Free, open-weight

One of the most prolific open-weight labs — dozens of model sizes, most free to self-host.

• Qwen3.8-Max— Flagship, best for autonomous coding on complex projects; API-only.Paid only
• Qwen3-Coder-480B and Qwen3-235B-A22B— Top open-weight coding and general models, Apache 2.0 licensed.Free, open-weight
• Qwen3 4B / 1.7B / 0.6B— Smaller models that run on a laptop.Free, open-weight

• Note: There is also a free consumer chat app at chat.qwen.ai.

A Chinese lab whose Kimi K-series is frequently cited alongside DeepSeek and Qwen as top-tier open-weight competition.

• Kimi K3— Current flagship (July 2026) with strong coding and agentic performance; public weights under Moonshot’s own license. The free tier of Moonshot’s own Kimi app does not include K3 — only the older K2.6.Free, open-weight
• Kimi K2.6— Prior flagship — free with limits in Moonshot’s free “Adagio” app tier, and also free to download and self-host.Free with limits

Known for competitive benchmark performance and a free small-model tier.

• GLM-5.3— Current flagship with strong general and coding performance; API-only.Paid only
• GLM-4.5-Flash (and related Flash-tier models)— Zhipu’s own pricing lists these at $0 per token.Free

• Note: Older GLM-4.x generations are open-weight; GLM-5.3’s open-weight status is unconfirmed as of this writing.

Amazon’s own model family, accessed through AWS Bedrock rather than a consumer app.

• Nova 2 Lite and Nova 2 Sonic— Amazon’s current fast multimodal and speech models, paid via Bedrock; new AWS customers get a one-time $200 credit but there is no ongoing free tier.Trial credits only

• Note: Nova Premier (the previous flagship) and Nova Canvas/Reel (image and video) were both discontinued in September 2026.
• Note: Of all twelve labs in this directory, Nova has the weakest free-tier story — no standing free access at all.

Best known for reselling OpenAI’s models via Copilot, but now also ships its own in-house “MAI” model family.

• MAI-1-preview— Microsoft’s first fully in-house general-purpose model — testable free on LMArena, with limited free use inside some Copilot features.Free with limits
• MAI-Code-1-Flash— A lightweight coding model, now the default model in VS Code and bundled into GitHub Copilot.Free

• Note: Voice, image and transcription MAI models exist but are mostly accessed bundled inside Microsoft 365 apps (Copilot, PowerPoint, Teams) rather than as standalone free tools.

Founded in 2024 by Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI's former chief scientist), Daniel Gross and Daniel Levy with a single stated goal: building safe superintelligence, with no near-term product line.

• No public models— SSI ships no consumer or API products — it is a pure research lab, so there is nothing to sign up for or try.Paid only

• Note: There is no free tier, no API and no waitlist product — the lab's site is a mission statement, not a storefront.

Founded in 2025 by Mira Murati (OpenAI's former CTO) with a team of well-known researchers, focused on making AI systems more understandable, customizable and generally capable.

• Tinker— A fine-tuning API for open-weight models — researchers and developers bring their own data and training loops; access has been via a waitlist.Free with limits

• Note: The lab also funds external work: its Safety Research Grants program supports independent research on AI safety and evaluation.

Founded in 2024 by Fei-Fei Li (creator of ImageNet) to build “world models” — AI that understands and generates 3D environments rather than just text.

• Marble— A generative world model that creates persistent, navigable 3D environments from text or images — free tier available with limits, paid plans for heavier use.Free with limits
• Atlas (research preview)— A larger world model announced on the lab's blog, aimed at more coherent, physically consistent generated worlds.Free with limits

A US lab founded in 2024 by former DeepMind researchers, working on open-weight frontier models and autonomous coding systems.

• Asimov (research preview)— A code-understanding agent designed to read and reason over entire codebases; access is via a waitlist rather than open sign-up.Free with limits

• Note: The lab has said it plans to release open-weight frontier models; as of this writing no weights are publicly downloadable.

A Canadian lab focused on enterprise AI — its models are built for business deployment, retrieval and private-cloud setups rather than a consumer chat app.

• Command A— Cohere's flagship enterprise model for agents, retrieval-augmented generation and multilingual business use; open weights for research, API is paid with a free trial tier.Free with limits
• Embed and Rerank— Search and retrieval models that power document search inside other products; free trial-rate API keys available.Free with limits

• Note: Cohere's free API tier is rate-limited and intended for evaluation and prototyping, not production traffic.