Frequently asked questions
Which LLM is best for chat in 2026?
Right now Claude Opus 5.5, Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Fable 5 lead (graded on Arena Elo (Text), IFEval and SimpleQA Verified plus an overall task grade). Best open-weight: MiMo-V2.6-Flash. Best budget pick graded A or better: Qwen3.7 Flash ($0.03/$0.13 per 1M tokens).
What is Arena Elo and can I trust it?
Arena Elo comes from LMArena, where people chat with two anonymous models and vote for the better answer. With millions of votes it is the strongest single signal for how a model feels to talk to. It measures preference, not correctness, so we pair it with factual-accuracy scores.
Which chat model can I use for free?
Several vendors offer a free tier on their own apps, and the open-weight leaders — MiMo-V2.6-Flash, Kimi K3 and Qwen 3.5 — can be run on your own machine at no cost per message.
Is there a private LLM I can chat with locally?
Yes. Any open-weight model can run on your own computer through Ollama or LM Studio, and nothing leaves your machine. Use the Can I Run LLM calculator to find the largest model your hardware can hold.
Which chat LLM is cheapest through an API?
The cheapest model graded A or better for chat is Qwen3.7 Flash ($0.03 in / $0.13 out per 1M tokens).