Updated: October 2026

Best LLM for Reasoning in 2026

The id8 Best LLM for Reasoning guide ranks 164 models. Reasoning models are judged on PhD-level science, Humanity's Last Exam, and expert multi-subject knowledge. Right now Gemini 3.1 Pro, GPT-6 Astra and Claude Fable 5 lead (graded on GPQA Diamond, Humanity's Last Exam and MMLU-Pro plus an overall task grade). Best open-weight: DeepSeek V4-Pro. Best budget pick graded A or better: Qwen3.7 Flash ($0.03/$0.13 per 1M tokens). Prices and scores are re-checked daily.

Frequently asked questions

Which LLM is best at reasoning in 2026?

Right now Gemini 3.1 Pro, GPT-6 Astra and Claude Fable 5 lead (graded on GPQA Diamond, Humanity's Last Exam and MMLU-Pro plus an overall task grade). Best open-weight: DeepSeek V4-Pro. Best budget pick graded A or better: Qwen3.7 Flash ($0.03/$0.13 per 1M tokens).

What is GPQA Diamond?

GPQA Diamond is the hardest 198-question subset of GPQA, a set of graduate-level science questions written by domain experts. Experts in the field score about 65% and skilled non-experts about 34% even with web access, so it still separates strong models.

What is Humanity's Last Exam?

Humanity's Last Exam is a benchmark of about 2,500 expert-written questions across many subjects, built to stay hard after older benchmarks saturated. Scores are much lower than on other tests, which makes differences between top models visible.

Should I use a thinking model for everyday tasks?

Usually not. Thinking modes use many more output tokens and add seconds of delay. Keep them for hard problems such as proofs, multi-step planning and difficult debugging; for ordinary questions and writing a standard model is cheaper and just as good.

Which open-weight LLM reasons best?

DeepSeek V4-Pro, Kimi K3 and Kimi K2.6 lead the open-weight models for reasoning right now. The cheapest model graded A or better is Qwen3.7 Flash ($0.03 in / $0.13 out per 1M tokens).

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