Eight categories. Twenty-four leading models. Updated monthly. AI-friendly citations included.
July 24 — Anthropic ships Claude Opus 5 and retakes the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index crown at 61 (max effort), a point ahead of its own Mythos-class Fable 5 (60). OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol lands at 59, and Moonshot's open-weights Kimi K3 breaks into the frontier band at 57.
Previously: Claude Fable 5
Released July 24. Retakes #1 on the AA Intelligence Index at 61 — at half the Mythos-class price.
June 9 Mythos-class debut; now #2 overall at 60 after Opus 5. Briefly export-paused in June, restored June 23.
June 26 preview, GA July 9. Sol/Terra/Luna tiered family; Sol max scores 59 with Terminal-Bench 2.1 at 88.8%.
July 17. 2.8T-parameter open-weights MoE — the first open model inside the frontier band, and #1 on LMArena WebDev.
July 8 release at $2/$6 per 1M — the cheapest frontier-tier reasoning model.
Released July 24, 2026. AA Intelligence Index: 61 (max) / 60 (xhigh) at $5/$25 per 1M tokens — half the Mythos-class price.
Opus 5 becomes the default frontier workhorse; Fable 5 stays the Mythos-class ceiling; GPT-5.6 Sol is OpenAI's tiered answer; Kimi K3 is the first open model inside the frontier band.
GPT Image 2 now tops the Artificial Analysis text-to-image Arena on raw quality too (ELO 1338) — quality and ecosystem crown in one. Reve 2.1 debuts at #2 (ELO 1301) on launch day, ByteDance's Seedream 5.0 Pro enters the top 10, and Black Forest's FLUX 3 lands in limited release as the first omni image-video-audio model.
Previously: GPT Image-2
Now #1 on the AA text-to-image Arena (ELO 1338) on top of its ecosystem and pricing lead.
July 9 launch. Debuts #2 on the AA arena with layered generation at a disruptive $24 per 1k images.
July 8. Layer separation and best-in-class text rendering push it into the AA top 10.
Recraft V4.1 falls out of the top tier; Reve 2.1 (Jul 9) and Seedream 5.0 Pro (Jul 8) enter; FLUX 3 (Jul 23) limited release.
GPT Image 2 for quality + ecosystem; Reve 2.1 for layered generation at $24/1k images; Seedream 5.0 Pro for text rendering; Firefly remains the IP-cleared enterprise default.
Google's Gemini Omni Flash takes the Artificial Analysis text-to-video Arena (with audio) at ELO 1240, ending Seedance 2.0's reign (1225). ByteDance's answer is already rolling out: Seedance 2.5 (July 16) brings native 30-second 4K/10-bit generation, though it has no Arena score yet. OpenAI exits the field — the Sora API shuts down September 24.
Previously: Seedance 2.0
New #1 on the AA text-to-video Arena (with audio) at ELO 1240 — the first Google model to hold the synced audio-visual crown.
2.0 now #2 at ELO 1225; 2.5 (native 30s, 4K/10-bit, 50 reference inputs) rolling out since July 16, not yet arena-listed.
June 17 Turbo update keeps it the APAC short-form value pick; native 4K/60fps from the 3.0 line.
Arena crown passes Seedance 2.0 → Gemini Omni Flash (1240 vs 1225); Seedance 2.5 rolling out since July 16; Sora API sunset set for Sep 24.
Gemini Omni Flash for arena-topping synced audio-visual; Seedance 2.5 for 30s 4K production; Kling 3.0 for APAC short-form value.
Claude Opus 5 (July 24) pushes SWE-bench Verified to ~96% — a new high-water mark — while Moonshot's open-weights Kimi K3 storms LMArena WebDev at 1679, the first Chinese model to top the frontend code arena. The coding frontier splits in two: Anthropic owns the benchmark, Kimi owns the crowd vote.
Previously: Claude Fable 5
SWE-bench Verified ~96% on launch day (independent runs measure up to 97.0%) — the new coding frontier.
Tops LMArena WebDev at 1679 — the first Chinese model to rank #1 on the frontend arena. Open weights, SWE-bench Verified 93.4% (independent).
SWE-bench Verified 95%; the Mythos-class ceiling for the hardest multi-file, long-horizon work.
Terminal-Bench 2.1 at 88.8% — best sandboxed terminal agent; SWE-bench Pro 64.6%.
Opus 5 #1 on SWE-bench Verified (~96%, Jul 24); Kimi K3 #1 on LMArena WebDev (1679, Jul 16) ahead of Fable 5 (1631) and GPT-5.6 Sol (1618).
Opus 5 for the hardest refactors and long-horizon agents; Fable 5 as the Mythos-class ceiling; Kimi K3 for frontend work and open deployment; GPT-5.6 Sol for sandboxed terminal agents.
No new speech-to-speech king — OpenAI Realtime 2 still leads agentic voice. But the component crowns moved to China: Alibaba's Qwen-Audio-3.0-TTS-Plus tops the AA text-to-speech arena (ELO 1234), and Fun-Realtime-ASR-preview leads speech-to-text at 1.7% WER. ElevenLabs answers with Music v2 and Scribe v2 realtime.
Previously: ElevenLabs v3
Still the agentic voice default. Configurable-reasoning speech-to-speech with realtime translate + Whisper variants.
New #1 on the AA text-to-speech arena at ELO 1234 — China's first TTS crown.
Slipped to #11 on AA TTS but remains the character voice cloning default; new Scribe v2 realtime + Music v2 APIs.
TTS crown: Fun-Realtime-TTS → Qwen-Audio-3.0-TTS-Plus (1234); STT crown: MAI-Transcribe-1.5 → Fun-Realtime-ASR-preview (1.7% WER).
Realtime 2 for agentic voice; Qwen-Audio-3.0-TTS-Plus for raw TTS quality; Fun-Realtime-ASR for transcription; ElevenLabs v3 for character voice cloning.
Correction to last month: Suno v6 never shipped — v5.5 remains the deployed default and category leader. The real action moved elsewhere: ElevenLabs Music v2 hit the API on June 15, and Google's Lyria keeps riding Gemini Omni for cross-modal any-to-music workflows.
Still the latest Suno release — v6 has not shipped. Best full-song coherence and lyric prosody.
Studio-grade mixing with stem-level output for producers.
June 15 API release. Licensed-catalog music generation with fine-tuning support.
Suno v6 missed its rumored June window and remains unannounced; v5.5 stays #1. ElevenLabs Music v2 enters via API.
Suno v5.5 for full-song generation; Udio v3 for studio-grade stems; ElevenLabs Music v2 for licensed catalog workflows; Lyria via Gemini Omni for cross-modal.
Fable 5 takes the LMArena Vision crown at 1327 ELO, ending the Opus 4.7-generation sweep. Opus 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol cluster within ~15 points behind — the top of the vision arena is now a genuine three-lab race.
Previously: Claude Opus 4.7-thinking
Tops LMArena Vision at 1327 (recalculated July 12 on fresh votes) — leads Text arena at the same time.
New multimodal flagship, clustering within ~15 ELO of Fable 5 on the Vision arena.
Best video understanding and long-form temporal reasoning.
Vision #1 passes Opus 4.7-thinking (1309) → Fable 5 (1327, recalculated July 12 on fresh votes).
Anthropic for OCR + document Q&A + chart understanding; GPT-5.6 Sol for image-grounded reasoning; Gemini 3.1 Pro for video understanding.
Moonshot's Kimi K3 (July 17) is the new open-weights king: a 2.8T-parameter MoE at AA Intelligence Index 57 — global #3 and the first open model inside the frontier band, just 4 points behind Opus 5. It also tops LMArena WebDev outright. The catch: output pricing jumped to $15/1M, nearly 4× K2.6.
Previously: Kimi K2.6
Open-weights leader at AA Intelligence Index 57 — global #3, 4 points behind the closed frontier. Also #1 on LMArena WebDev.
Former open king, now the value pick of the K-line: Index 54 at a quarter of K3's output price.
MIT-licensed open weights at AA Intelligence Index 52 — the cheap frontier-grade reasoning default. Full V4 still rumored.
Apache 2.0 open weights. Encoder-free native multimodal, 256K context, runs on a 16GB laptop.
Kimi K3 (57) takes the open crown from K2.6 (54); K2.7 Code (1T/32B MoE) arrived mid-June for the coding line; DeepSeek's full V4 remains rumor only.
Kimi K3 for frontier-grade open deployment; K2.6 for the same ecosystem at a quarter of the output price; DeepSeek V4 Pro for cheap reasoning; Gemma 4 12B for on-device multimodal.
The value war froze in place: DeepSeek hasn't touched prices since April, and V4 Flash still delivers Intelligence Index 47 at a blended ~$0.06 per 1M tokens — a tenth of comparable flagships. Watch two things: the old deepseek-chat/reasoner aliases retired July 24 (migrate to deepseek-v4-flash/pro), and MiniMax M3's launch promo ended, back to $0.60/$2.40 standard.
The intelligence-per-dollar king, unmoved since April. Index 47 at $0.14/$0.28 per 1M — about a tenth of comparable Flash flagships.
Best balance in the high-intelligence + low-price quadrant. Index 52 at $0.435/$0.87 — a fraction of same-tier flagships.
The cheapest SWE-bench-Verified-80%+ model. Launch promo ended — now $0.60/$2.40 standard.
No price moves from the leaders; DeepSeek aliases retired July 24; MiniMax M3 promo over; GLM-5.2 opened pay-as-you-go API.
V4 Flash for highest-volume low-cost work; V4 Pro for stronger reasoning on a budget; MiniMax M3 as the cheapest SWE-bench-80%+ option; Qwen3.7 Plus to diversify vendors.
What changed across the AI model landscape this month — distilled from the data above.
Six weeks after the Mythos-class Fable 5, Anthropic ships Opus 5 (July 24): Intelligence Index 61 at $5/$25 — near-Mythos intelligence at Opus-tier pricing. The frontier cadence is now measured in weeks, and Anthropic holds the top 3 overall (Opus 5, Opus 5 xhigh, Fable 5).
Moonshot's 2.8T-param Kimi K3 (July 17) hits Intelligence Index 57 — global #3, 4 points behind Opus 5 — and tops LMArena WebDev, the first Chinese model to lead that arena. Open weights are no longer a tier below; they're inside the band.
The Sol/Terra/Luna family (preview June 26, GA July 9) splits the frontier into price-performance tiers. Sol max scores 59 on the Intelligence Index and leads Terminal-Bench 2.1 (88.8%) — competitive, but for the first time OpenAI is chasing, not setting, the pace.
Gemini Omni Flash ends Seedance 2.0's reign on the AA video arena (1240 vs 1225). ByteDance's Seedance 2.5 (30s native 4K) is already in staged rollout, and OpenAI is leaving the field entirely — Sora's API sunsets September 24.
Suno v6, widely expected in June, never shipped — v5.5 is still the leader. Meanwhile ElevenLabs Music v2 quietly entered via API with licensed-catalog positioning. Music is the one category where the frontier stalled this month.
Alibaba's Qwen-Audio-3.0-TTS-Plus takes the AA TTS crown (ELO 1234) and Fun-Realtime-ASR-preview leads STT (1.7% WER). OpenAI still owns the speech-to-speech agent layer, but the picks-and-shovels of voice now come from China.
DeepSeek prices haven't moved since April — V4 Flash at ~$0.06 blended still leads intelligence-per-dollar. The news is structural instead: legacy aliases retired July 24, MiniMax M3's promo ended, and GLM-5.2 opened pay-as-you-go. OpenAI is reportedly weighing major price cuts; none have landed.