Most powerful LLMs (Large Language Models) in 2025
Read Time 30 mins | Written by: Cole

[Last updated: Jun. 2025]
The LLMs (Large Language Models) underneath the hood of ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Cursor, and other generative AI tools are the main tech your company needs to understand.
LLMs make chatbots possible (internal and customer-facing), can assist in increasing coding efficiency, and are the driving force behind why Nvidia exploded into the most valuable company in the world.
Model size, context window size, performance, cost, and availability of these LLMs determine what you can build and how expensive it is to run.
Here are the important stats of the most powerful LLMs available.
LLMs (Large Language Models) for enterprise systems
OpenAI LLMs
ChatGPT and OpenAI are household names when it comes to large language models (LLMs). They started the generative AI firestorm with $10 billion in Microsoft funding and their GPT models have been at the top of the best LLMs available ever since.
Model | Parameters | Context Window | Max Output Tokens | Knowledge Cutoff | Strengths & Features | Cost (per M tokens In/Out) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
GPT-4.1 | Not public | 1,000,000 tokens | 32,768 tokens | June 2024 | Improved coding (+21% vs GPT-4o), enhanced instruction following (+10.5% vs GPT-4o), robust long-context handling | $2.00 / $8.00 |
GPT-4.1 Mini | Not public | 1,000,000 tokens | 32,768 tokens | June 2024 | Cost-efficient variant of GPT-4.1 for faster, lower-cost tasks | $1.60 / $6.40 |
GPT-4.1 Nano | Not public | 1,000,000 tokens | 32,768 tokens | June 2024 | Lightweight, fastest, and most affordable member of the GPT-4.1 family | $0.80 / $3.20 |
GPT-4o | ~1.8 trillion | 128,000 tokens | 16,384 tokens | October 2023 | Fast, multimodal general-purpose model with strong reasoning and image capabilities | $2.50 / $10.00 |
o3 | Not public | 200,000 tokens | 100,000 tokens | June 2024 | Reflective reasoning model with private chain-of-thought; excels at coding, math, science, vision | $10.00 / $40.00 |
o3-mini | Not public | 200,000 tokens | 100,000 tokens | September 2023 | Cost-effective reasoning model with three effort levels; strong STEM performance | $1.10 / $4.40 |
o4-mini | Not public | 200,000 tokens | 100,000 tokens | June 2024 | Fast, cost-efficient reasoning model; best-performing on AIME 2024 & 2025; excels in math, coding, and visual analysis | $1.10 / $4.40 |
Anthropic LLMs
Anthropic was founded by ex-OpenAI VPs who wanted to prioritize safety and reliability in AI models. They moved slower than OpenAI but their Claude 3 family of LLMs were the first to take the crown from OpenAI GPT-4 on the leaderboards in early 2024.
Anthropic followed up the coding favorite Claude 3.7 Sonnet with Claude 4 Opus and Claude 4 Sonnet for advanced coding tasks and reliable enterprise tools.
Model | Parameters | Context Window | Max Output Tokens | Knowledge Cutoff | Strengths & Features | Cost (per M tokens Input/Output) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Claude Opus 4 | Not public | 200,000 tokens | 32,000 tokens | Mar 2025 | World's best coding model; sustained performance on complex, long-running tasks and agent workflows; extended thinking & tool use | $15.00 / $75.00 |
Claude Sonnet 4 | Not public | 200,000 tokens | 64,000 tokens | Mar 2025 | Superior coding & reasoning; precise instruction following; hybrid model with extended thinking & tool use | $3.00 / $15.00 |
Claude 3.7 Sonnet | ~175 B | 200,000 tokens |
Normal: 8,192 tokens Extended Thinking: 64,000 tokens (128,000 tokens with beta API) |
Oct 2024 | Highest intelligence; extended reasoning; excels in complex problem-solving | $3.00 / $15.00 |
Claude 3 Opus | Not public | 200,000 tokens | 4,096 tokens | Aug 2023 | Top-tier intelligence, fluency & detailed analysis for intricate problem-solving | $15.00 / $75.00 |
Google LLMs
Google was notoriously far behind on commercial LLMs – even though a Google team developed the revolutionary transformer technology that makes LLMs possible.
They’ve since caught up in capabilities with the Gemini family multimodal models and their 1-2 million token context windows. Gemini 2.5 Pro is currently leading in many performance benchmarks.
Model | Parameters | Context Window | Max Output Tokens | Knowledge Cutoff | Strengths & Features | Cost (per M tokens In/Out) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Gemini 2.5 Pro | Not public | 1,048,576 tokens | 65,535 tokens | May 2024 | Most advanced reasoning model; multimodal input; improved capabilities | $1.25–$2.50 / $10.00–$15.00 |
Gemini 2.5 Flash | Not public | 1,048,576 tokens | 65,535 tokens | May 2024 | Cost-optimized Flash line with thinking budgets; balanced performance | $0.15 / $0.60 (non-thinking), $3.50 (thinking) |
Gemini 2.0 Flash | Not public | 1,048,576 tokens | 8,192 tokens | May 2024 | Next-gen multimodal model; low latency; enhanced throughput | $0.10 / $0.40 |
Gemini 2.0 Flash-Lite | Not public | 1,048,576 tokens | 8,192 tokens | May 2024 | Fastest, most cost-efficient Flash model; upgrade path for 1.5 Flash users | $0.075 / $0.30 |
Mistral LLMs
Mistral AI is a leading French AI company specializing in developing cutting-edge large language models (LLMs) designed for efficiency, performance, and accessibility. With a strong commitment to open-source innovation and affordable premium offerings, Mistral AI has positioned itself as a leading provider in the AI ecosystem, catering to both enterprise and community-driven use cases.
Model | Parameters | Context Window | Max Output Tokens | Knowledge Cutoff | Strengths & Features | Cost (per M tokens In/Out) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mistral Medium 3 | Not publicly disclosed | 128,000 tokens | Not specified | May 2025 | Frontier-class multimodal model balancing SOTA performance, 8× lower cost; enterprise features (hybrid/on-prem, custom post-training, tool integration) | $0.40 / $2.00 |
Codestral | Not publicly disclosed | 256,000 tokens | Not specified | Jan 2025 | Cutting-edge coding model optimized for low latency, high-frequency tasks (FIM, code correction, test generation) | $0.30 / $0.90 |
Mistral Large | Not publicly disclosed | 128,000 tokens | Not specified | Nov 2024 | Top-tier reasoning model for high-complexity analytical tasks | $2.00 / $6.00 |
Pixtral Large | Not publicly disclosed | 128,000 tokens | Not specified | Nov 2024 | Frontier-class multimodal model combining vision and text understanding | $2.00 / $6.00 |
Mistral Saba | Not publicly disclosed | 32,000 tokens | Not specified | Feb 2025 | Regional language model optimized for Middle East & South Asia use cases | $0.20 / $0.60 |
Ministral 3B | 3 billion | 128,000 tokens | Not specified | Oct 2024 | Highly efficient edge model for resource-constrained deployments | $0.04 / $0.04 |
Ministral 8B | 8 billion | 128,000 tokens | Not specified | Oct 2024 | Powerful edge model with exceptional performance-to-cost ratio | $0.10 / $0.10 |
Best LLMs for coding & software development
These LLMs solve complex problems and deliver code that can be used to build production applications faster – not just vibe code a prototype.
Model | Parameters | Context Window | Max Output Tokens | Knowledge Cutoff | Strengths & Features | Cost (per M tokens In/Out) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Claude Opus 4 | Not public | 200,000 tokens | 32,000 tokens | Mar 2025 | Excels at coding & complex problem-solving; sustained performance on long tasks; extended tool & agent workflows | $15.00 / $75.00 |
Claude Sonnet 4 | Not public | 200,000 tokens | 64,000 tokens | Mar 2025 | Superior coding & reasoning; precise instruction following; 72.7% on SWE-bench Verified | $3.00 / $15.00 |
Claude 3.7 Sonnet | ~175 B | 200,000 tokens |
Normal: 8,192 tokens Extended Thinking: 64,000 tokens (128,000 tokens with beta API) |
Oct 2024 | Exceptional reasoning; full development lifecycle support; state-of-the-art coding accuracy | $3.00 / $15.00 |
GPT-4.1 | Not public | 1,000,000 tokens | 32,768 tokens | June 2024 | Improved coding efficiency; code optimization & security analysis; 54.6% on SWE-bench Verified | $2.00 / $8.00 |
GPT-4o | ~1.8 T | 128,000 tokens | 16,384 tokens | October 2023 | Multimodal code understanding; rapid prototyping with vision & text | $2.50 / $10.00 |
o3 | Not public | 200,000 tokens | 100,000 tokens | June 2024 | Reflective reasoning; strong STEM & algorithmic performance | $10.00 / $40.00 |
o3-mini | Not public | 200,000 tokens | 100,000 tokens | September 2023 | Affordable educational model; 49.3% on SWE-bench | $1.10 / $4.40 |
o4-mini | Not public | 200,000 tokens | 100,000 tokens | June 2024 | Fast, cost-efficient; excels in math & visual analysis | $1.10 / $4.40 |
Gemini 2.5 Pro | Not public | 1,048,576 tokens | 65,535 tokens | May 2024 | Deep Think reasoning; top full-stack development performance | $1.25–$2.50 / $10.00–$15.00 |
DeepSeek R1 | 671 B MoE (37 B active) | 128,000 tokens | Not specified | Jan 2025 | Mixture-of-Experts; exceptional math & algorithmic reasoning | Open-source (MIT license) |
DeepSeek V3 | 671 B (37 B active) | 64,000 tokens | Not specified | Mar 2025 | Distilled reasoning; improved performance control & efficiency | Open-source (MIT license) |
Open source LLMs for enterprise
DeepSeek Open Source LLMs
DeepSeek shocked the AI community in 2025 by releasing the open-source model DeepSeek-R1, which demonstrated competitive performance against leading proprietary frontier models, challenging the traditional dominance of closed-source solutions.
Because of development in China and assertions from OpenAI, DeepSeek has some large security risks to account for before using for enterprise.
Model | Parameters | Context Window | Knowledge Cutoff | Strengths & Features | License Type |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
DeepSeek-R1 | 671 billion (MoE) | 64K | 8k |
Excels in reasoning-intensive tasks, including code generation and complex mathematical computations.
|
MIT License |
DeepSeek-V3 | Not publicly disclosed | 64K | 8k |
Outperforms other open-source models; achieves performance comparable to leading closed-source models.
|
MIT License |
DeepSeek-Coder-V2 | 236 billion | 16k | Not specified |
Enhanced coding and mathematical reasoning abilities; pre-trained on 6 trillion tokens.
|
MIT License |
DeepSeek-VL | Not publicly disclosed | Not specified | Not specified | Designed to enhance multimodal understanding capabilities. | MIT License |
Nvidia Open Source LLMs
Nvidia is known for their GPUs but they have a whole enterprise AI ecosystem – from dev tools to their NIM microservices platform. They had early entries into LLM space with ChatRTX and Starcoder 2 but their most powerful LLM offering is the Nemotron-4 340B model family.
Model | Parameters | Context Window | Max Output Tokens | Knowledge Cutoff | Strengths & Features | Availability | License Type |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nemotron-4 340B Base | 340 billion | 4,096 tokens | 4,000 tokens | June 2023 |
Base model for synthetic data generation; trained on 9 trillion tokens across English texts, 50+ natural languages, and 40+ coding languages.
|
NVIDIA NGC, Hugging Face | NVIDIA Open Model License |
Nemotron-4 340B Instruct | 340 billion | 4,096 tokens | 4,000 tokens | June 2023 |
Fine-tuned model optimized for English conversational AI (single- and multi-turn interactions).
|
NVIDIA NGC, Hugging Face | NVIDIA Open Model License |
Nemotron-4 340B Reward | 340 billion | 4,096 tokens | 4,000 tokens | June 2023 | Multidimensional Reward Model designed for evaluating outputs and generating synthetic training data. | NVIDIA NGC, Hugging Face | NVIDIA Open Model Licens |
Meta Llama 3 Open Source LLMs
While Meta is commonly known for being a champion of open source in AI, their models are open weights and not true open source according to many. Either way, open weights still means you can run these models locally – which you can't do with OpenAI LLMs.
Model |
Parameters |
Context Window |
Max Output Tokens |
Knowledge Cutoff |
Strengths & Features |
License Type |
Cost |
70 billion |
128,000 tokens |
Not specified |
December 2023 |
General-purpose multilingual model with optimized transformer architecture, pretrained on 15T tokens.
|
Llama 3.3 Community License |
Free (open-source) |
|
70 billion |
128,000 tokens |
Not specified |
December 2023 |
Instruction-tuned multilingual model optimized for conversational tasks with RLHF fine-tuning.
|
Llama 3.3 Community License |
Free (open-source) |
|
1.23 billion |
128,000 tokens |
Not specified |
December 2023 |
Lightweight multilingual model, optimized for mobile AI applications, retrieval, summarization, and chat use cases.
|
Llama 3.2 Community License |
Free (open-source) |
|
3.21 billion |
128,000 tokens |
Not specified |
December 2023 |
Mid-sized multilingual model for agentic retrieval, summarization, conversational tasks, and efficient inference.
|
Llama 3.2 Community License |
Free (open-source) |
|
1.23 billion |
8,000 tokens |
Not specified |
December 2023 |
Quantized for highly constrained environments, optimized for mobile and edge use cases with minimal compute needs.
|
Llama 3.2 Community License |
Free (open-source) |
|
3.21 billion |
8,000 tokens |
Not specified |
December 2023 |
Efficiently quantized, optimized for resource-constrained deployments, suitable for mobile and embedded AI. |
Llama 3.2 Community License |
Free (open-sourc |
Qwen Open Source LLMs
Qwen refers to the LLM family built by Alibaba Cloud. Qwen2 has generally surpassed most open source models and demonstrated competitiveness against proprietary models across a series of benchmarks targeting for language understanding, language generation, multilingual capability, coding, mathematics, reasoning, etc.
Model | Parameters | Context Window | Max Output Tokens | Knowledge Cutoff | Strengths & Features | License Type |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Qwen-2.5-7B | 7 billion | Not specified | Not specified | Not specified |
Enhanced general-purpose capabilities with improved performance.
|
Apache 2.0 |
Qwen-2.5-14B | 14 billion | Not specified | Not specified | Not specified |
Higher performance for more complex tasks and reasoning scenarios.
|
Apache 2.0 |
Qwen-2.5-32B | 32 billion | Not specified | Not specified | Not specified |
Advanced model suitable for highly complex tasks, reasoning, and language generation.
|
Apache 2.0 |
Qwen-2.5-72B | 72 billion | Not specified | Not specified | Not specified |
Large-scale model offering extensive capabilities in deep understanding and generation tasks.
|
Apache 2.0 |
Qwen-2.5-7B-Instruct-1M | 7 billion | Up to 1 million tokens | Not specified | Not specified |
Instruction-tuned, supports extended contexts, optimized for tasks requiring long context understanding.
|
Apache 2.0 |
Qwen-2.5-14B-Instruct-1M | 14 billion | Up to 1 million tokens | Not specified | Not specified |
Larger instruction-tuned model designed for complex tasks requiring extensive context.
|
Apache 2.0 |
Qwen-2.5-Coder-32B-Instruct | 32 billion | Not specified | Not specified | Not specified |
Optimized specifically for coding tasks, demonstrating state-of-the-art programming capabilities.
|
Apache 2.0 |
Qwen-2-VL-Instruct-7B | 7 billion | Not specified | Not specified | Not specified | Multimodal model with vision-language capabilities, optimized for instruction-following tasks. | Apache 2.0 |
Mistral AI Open Source LLMs
Mistral AI has positioned itself as a leading provider in the AI ecosystem, catering to both enterprise and community-driven use cases.
Model | Parameters | Context Window | Max Output Tokens | Knowledge Cutoff | Strengths & Features | Cost |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mistral Small (v3.1) | 24 billion | 131,000 tokens | Not specified | Mar 2025 |
Leader in small-model category; strong in text and image understanding.
|
Free (open-source) |
Pixtral (12B) | 12 billion | 131,000 tokens | Not specified | Sep 2024 |
Mid-sized multimodal model optimized for efficient text and image processing.
|
Free (open-source) |
Mistral Nemo | Not publicly disclosed | 131,000 tokens | Not specified | Jul 2024 |
Robust multilingual capabilities supporting extensive international languages.
|
Free (open-source) |
Codestral Mamba | Not publicly disclosed | 256,000 tokens | Not specified | Jul 2024 |
Specialized Mamba architecture for rapid inference and efficient code generation.
|
Free (open-source) |
Mathstral | Not publicly disclosed | 32,000 tokens | Not specified | Jul 2024 | Specialized model optimized for mathematical reasoning and computational problem-solving. | Free (open-source) |
How do I hire a senior AI development team that knows LLMs?
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Cole
Cole is Codingscape's Content Marketing Strategist & Copywriter.