Best Open-Source LLMs: Open-Weights Models Ranked by Intelligence

The trained model can be downloaded. Anyone with suitable hardware can run it, change it or host it. The training data and code may still be closed, which is why many people say open weights rather than open source.

Often yes, but not always. Licences differ. The access column shows how Epoch describes each model's terms. Always read the real licence on the maker's page before using a model commercially.

Open models can be run at your own cost or hosted by others. Check the overall leaderboard to see how they score next to closed models, and compare the cost of hosting yourself with the price of an API.

A model appears only when an open source has published results for it. New models can take days or weeks to be measured, and models with no published score are left out rather than guessed.

Scores come from Epoch AI's open benchmark data (licensed CC BY 4.0). We match models across sources, rank them and show them in charts, without changing the scores. Epoch AI does not endorse this site. Prices and context windows come from the open-source LiteLLM price list (MIT licence), which records each model maker's own price page. Prices change often, so confirm on the maker's site before you buy.

We check our open data sources every day and show the date of the data at the top of the page. A model only moves when its source publishes new results, so a number can stay the same for weeks.