12 Best Large Language Models Powering Tomorrow’s Tech

LLMs are a type of AI system developed to deal with text-based queries. However, they have evolved and transformed the way we work, create, and interact with AI. The best LLMs are useful for content generation, code generation, and more tasks. 

The initial LLM research kicked off in 2010. In 2014, the attention mechanism, a machine learning technique, was introduced, and then, by 2017, the launch of transformer architecture revolutionized the entire field. However, LLMs became the talk of the town with the success of ChatGPT.

• The chatbot gained 100 million users in a span of two months. Considering their success, various leading tech giants started launching LLMs. 
• Moreover, the demand for LLMs is evolving. As per the latest report, the demand for LLM in North America is estimated to increase from 848.65 million USD in 2023 to 105,545.17 million USD by 2030. 

So, whether you are a developer, researcher, or tech enthusiast diving into LLM development to build chatbots, virtual assistants, or other products, choosing the right LLM for your project is essential. But with plenty of options, this becomes challenging.

In this blog, we will discuss the top LLMs and the key criteria we use to choose them.

So, let’s get started.

Key Criteria We Consider for Choosing the Best LLMs

Here are some essential criteria we have considered when choosing the best LLMs.

• Performance Capabilities: How the model understands the prompts, produces reliable output, and easily handles complex tasks in different fields.
• Context Length: The total text LLM can process at once, directly impacting the coherence, memory, accuracy, and long-form interactions. 
• Usability and Availability: How simple is it to access and integrate the model using different AIS and platforms? We also checked their cost and deployment flexibility.
• Multimodal Abilities: Does the model support different data types? It could be text, image, audio, or video. This further helps in the development of AI applications.
• Ethics and Safety: Check the model’s capability to deal with bias, false information, or harmful content, including inherent safety and optimization features for the best output.
• Licensing: Is the model open-source or commercially licensed with limited access and customization?

12 Best Large Language Models in 2025 and Beyond

#1 GPT

OpenAI has released a series of large language models, from GPT-2 to the most recent and powerful GPT-4.5. Every new model has better capabilities in natural language understanding, reasoning, creativity, and multimodal.

OpenAI’s latest version, GPT-4.5, is one of the best large language models. It is an optimized step between GPT-4 and GPT-4o. This model offers significant enhancements in performance, latency, and cost. It performs best in complex tasks and long-form understanding. The model primarily targets users who want to build enterprise—and pro-level applications.

Here are some essential aspects you should know about the latest GPT-4.5 version.

• Developer: OpenAI
• Parameters: Not disclosed
• Content Window: Up to 256k tokens (estimated)
• Availability: ChatGPT (Pro), API
• Strength: Improved reasoning, quick responses, and lower latency than GPT-4.
• License: Proprietary

Regarding the earlier GPT models, GPT-4o has received a lot of popularity. The o here stands for Omni, and the model is designed well to analyze and respond to different data types like text, images, and audio outputs simultaneously. This results in better conversations and real-time interactivity. 

Other GPT models released by OpenAI

• GPT-3.5: The free version of GPT, and it’s great for text generation, creative writing, and casual use.
• GPT-4: It is a large multimodal model that accepts inputs via text and images and provides human-level performance on a wide range of professional and academic benchmarks.
• GPT-4(Turbo): Enhanced version of GPT-4, takes input via text and images, and provides output in text only. 
• GPT-3: This model is currently available through the OpenAI API. It works well for lightweight applications where cost is crucial.

OpenAI’s ecosystem consists of a wide variety of AI models. Hence, you can choose a GPT model considering the budget, complexity, and functionality.

Also Read: GPT 3 vs GPT 4: How is GPT 4 better than GPT 3?

#2 Claude

Claude by Anthropic is one of the best large language models available. It has three branches: Opus, Haiku, and Sonet.

The latest version, Claude 3.7 Sonet, which Antropic recently released, has the highest level of intelligence and deeper reasoning ability and can even handle complex problems in a step-by-step manner. 

The most fantastic feature of Claude 3.7 Sonet is its extended thinking mode. This feature basically focuses on a method that includes intentional reasoning or self-reflection loops to ensure the model optimizes the process, analyzes various reasoning paths, and achieves maximum accuracy before providing the output.

Claude 3.7 Sonet is great for front-end development, code generation, advanced problem-solving, and more. 

Here are some of the key aspects of Claude 3.7 Sonet that you should know: 

• Developer: Anthropic
• Parameters: Not disclosed
• Content Window: 200,000 tokens
• Availability: Claude Web, iOS app, API, Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI; Free, Pro, Team, and Enterprise plans
• Strength: Great for reasoning, multilingual tasks, content generation, conversational AI
• License: Proprietary

Claude 3.5 Sonet is the previous version released in June 2024. This model came with exceptional enhancements in coding, workflow, automation, and visual data extraction. A well-known feature is agentic computer use, which enables the AI to conduct multistep tasks autonomously.

Other Popular Claude Models

• Claude 3 Opus: The highly intelligent model delivers best-in-class performance on very complex and open-ended tasks.
• Claude 3.5 Haiku: Haiku is Anthropic’s fastest model, enhanced well for quick responses and moderate complexity. It is best for rapid coding, data extraction, and building conversational chatbots.

Also Read: Chatbot vs Conversational AI: What Sets Them Apart?

#3 Gemini

Being one of the best LLMs in the market, Google’s Gemini 2.5 family sets new standards regarding advanced reasoning, multimodal capabilities, and scalability. Hence, Gemini 2.5 is an absolute no-brainer choice for developers and enterprises.

The Gemini 2.5 family has two versions: Gemini 2.5 Pro and Gemini 2.5 Flash. Google Gemini 2.5 Pro is built to handle the most complex tasks based on deep reasoning and coding expertise. The model outperforms competitors on some of the most popular benchmarks, such as Humanity’s Last Exam and SWE-Bench Verified. The model is great for complex coding, deep-level reasoning, detailed data analysis, fetching all the insights from dense documents, and looking after the entire codebase.

Here are some of the key highlights of Google Gemini 2.5 Pro:

• Developer: Google DeepMind
• Parameters: Not Publicly Disclosed 
• Content Window: 1 Million Tokens. Expected to reach 2 million tokens in the future.
• Availability: Available for Google Vertex AI, Gemini API, and Gemini Advanced users in the Gemini app.
• Strengths: State-of-the-art reasoning, advanced reasoning capabilities, native modality, long context window, improved performance on benchmarks, and interaction and integration of external tools and APIs. 
• License: Proprietary

When talking about the Gemini 2.5 Flash, the model is fine-tuned, particularly for low latency and cost efficiency, while still delivering impressive speed and consistent quality. It is even a thinking model that comes with adaptable and controllable reasoning. The model ensures high performance while maintaining the speed and efficiency of high-volume tasks. 

Gemini 2.5 Flash is great for scenarios where speed and cost are the most important things, such as customer service, real-time information processing, responsive virtual assistants, real-time summarization tools, and more.

Here are some of the key highlights of Gemini 2.5 Flash you should know:

• Developer: Google DeepMind
• Parameters: Not Publicly Disclosed
• Content Window: Up to 1 Million Tokens
• Availability: Available via Google Vertex AI and Gemini API
• Strengths: Lightweight and fine-tuned well for enhanced speed & efficiency, suitable for real-time applications, faster responses, and lower latency than Gemini 2.5 Pro
• License: Proprietary

Other Google Gemini Models

• Google Gemini 2.0 Pro: This is one of the most robust models suitable for coding. It offers comprehensive world knowledge and works well for long contexts.
• Google Gemini 2.0 Flash: Multimodal provides enhanced performance for real-time streaming and everyday tasks.
• Google Gemini 2.0 Flash Lite: A lighter and highly efficient model for instant responses and low latency.
• Google Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking: The model improves decision-making and logical reasoning in a constrained environment.

#4 Gemma

Gemma 3 is among the top LLMs because it delivers high-performance language modeling to the open-source community. The latest model is top-notch in terms of multimodal capabilities, multilingual support, and enhanced speed and performance, so it is a preferred choice of researchers and developers. 

Here are some of the key highlights of Gemma 3 that you should be aware of:

• Developer: Google DeepMind
• Parameters: 1B, 4B, 12B, and 27B parameters
• Content Window: 32,000 tokens (1B); 128,000 tokens (4B, 12B, 27B)
• Availability: Accessible via HuggingFace, Google AI Studio, and works well with most AI frameworks. 
• Strengths: Multimodality, support for 140+ languages, state-of-the-art performance, function calling for third-party tools and API integration, and a quantized version that helps reduce memory requirements and enhance speed.
• License: Open-weight and allows responsible commercial use.

This large language model has optimized vision capabilities, long context windows, and multilingual support. Different parameters support different data types. For instance, 4B, 12B, and 17B support text and images, while 1B only supports text. 

Besides this, Gemma 2 is the earlier version, which is also popular. This model emphasizes the strong performance and efficiency of multiple applications. It is also available in different sizes and performs well in various areas, such as reasoning and code generation.

#5 Grok

Grok AI was developed and launched by Elon Musk’s xAI. The latest AI chatbot provides unfiltered responses, instant web access, and an exclusive “rebellious” personality. It is integrated inside platform X(previously Twitter) and merges humor with practical utility. 

The large language model easily handles crucial tasks such as document analysis, idea generation, image production, etc.

Grok 3 is the latest version released by xAI in February 2025. The latest version is built using 10X more power than Grok 2. Therefore, this version delivers best-in-class performance and reasoning abilities. 

Here are some of the key highlights of Grok 3.

• Developer: xAI
• Parameters: Not disclosed
• Content Window: 1 million tokens (expandable to 2 million for enterprise)
• Availability: Grok-3 is available through the X platform (web, mobile), grok.com, and a mobile app, with free and paid tiers.
• Strength: Think & Big Brain modes, real-time information access, improved reasoning & problem-solving, deep internet search, and more.
• License: Proprietary

Grok 3 Mini is an earlier version of Grok 3. The model delivers quick and cost-effective reasoning for real-time tasks like customer service, virtual assistants, and more. However, it is not suitable for tasks that involve deep domain knowledge.

Other Popular Grok Models

• Grok 1: A text-focused model that generated unfiltered answers and responses directly from X.
• Grok 2: An AI assistant that offers advanced text and vision understanding, Flux image generation, coding, and multilingual capabilities. It also derives data in real-time from the X(Twitter). 
• Grok 1.5V: This multimodal model has robust text-generation capabilities and can process visual information, such as images, documents, charts, photos, and real-world scenes.

#6 Llama

Meta’s Llama has its own set of open-source LLMs that deliver multimodal intelligence and unmatched accessibility. The company has just released two new models in the Llama 4: Scout and Maverick.

Here are some of the key aspects of Llama 4: 

• Developer: Meta 
• Parameters: 17B active (Scout/Maverick), 109B total parameters (Scout), and 400B total parameters (Maverick)
• Content Window: Scout has 10 million tokens, and Maverick has not disclosed
• Availability: Open weights via Hugging Face; managed APIs on AWS Bedrock and watsonx.
• Strengths: Multimodal mastery, STEM dominance, cost-effectiveness, and high performance.
• License: Open weights, custom license

Llama 4’s context window deals with codebases or entire books in one go. However, Llama’s mixture-of-experts architecture decreases the computational costs up to 70% compared to the classic models. 

Llama Behemoth is an upcoming model that aims to exceed GPT-5 in some exclusive domains, such as quantum physics. 

Other models by Llama

Llama 3 was released in April 2024. It comprises two of the most powerful models, Llama 8B and 70B parameter models. Compared to their predecessors, these models provide improved performance, safety, advanced reasoning, coding abilities, and instruction. Lastly, the models are fine-tuned for real-world deployment in research and production.

#7 Mistral

Mistral is a French intelligence startup that has gained worldwide recognition as one of the best open-source LLMs. It was founded with the support of two researchers who have worked with Meta and Google DeepMind. Mistral aims to build open, portable, and tailored models that are cost-effective and consume fewer resources than competitors’ models.

Mistral AI released the latest LLM, the Mistral Small 3.1, in March 2025. The model has multimodal capabilities; hence, it can understand text and images and respond effectively. It is suitable for various applications, such as programming, mathematical reasoning, document processing, dialogue, on-device command and control, and more. 

Here are some of the key aspects of Mistral Small 3.1 that you should be aware of:

• Developer: Mistral AI
• Parameters: 24 billion
• Content Window: Up to 128,000 tokens
• Availability:  Available on Vertex AI, Azure AI Studio, Amazon Bedrock, and IBM
• Strengths: multimodal and multilingual, high performance, and improved efficiency.
• License: Open-Source

The earlier version of Mistral AI is Mistral 3, which is known for providing quick and fast responses and high performance. This model is great for any initial startup that wants to build low-latency AI solutions without any high-end infrastructure.

Other models released by Mistral 

• Mistral Large: A flagship model that delivers cutting-edge performance in coding, problem-solving, analytics tasks, and reasoning. Great for building enterprise-level applications.
• Mistral Edge: Developed especially to work in limited environments without missing out on crucial capabilities.
• Mistral Codestral: Robust language model suitable for code generation and understanding. It is even fine-tuned for the developer workflows.
• Mistral Embed: LLM is ideal for semantic search and content organization. 
• Mistral Saba: A 24B parameter model trained effectively using the datasets from the Middle East and South Asia.

#8 DeepSeek

DeepSeek is a robust, large language model designed and developed by DeepSeek AI. The model is recognized for high-level reasoning, coding efficiency, and multi-language support. It falls under the list of best open-source LLMs because of its unique architecture and solid performance in real-world applications.

The latest version, DeepSeek V3, was released in June 2024. It is a significant upgrade from the competitors and is known to deliver enhanced reasoning and effective coding abilities. The previous versions did not support file uploads, while this version does and offers precise and context-aware responses. 

The DeepSeek V3 model is an expert in open-weight performance and competes well with GPT and Claude. Hence, it is considered one of the best LLMs for researchers and enterprises.

Here are some of the key insights of the DeepSeek V3 Model.

• Developer: DeepSeek AI
• Parameters: Not officially disclosed
• Content Window: 128K tokens
• Availability: Free to use (web & API), open-weight models
• Strength: Robust in coding, reasoning, and multilingual tasks
• License: Open-Source for research, commercial use permitted

DeepSeek-V2 is the previous version released by DeepSeek AI in the first phase of 2024. It is also a robust LLM with a 32K content window and multiple language support. Despite looking interesting, the model falls back on memory and file-handling capabilities.  

Other Popular Models Released by DeepSeek

• DeepSeek R1: Focuses heavily on reasoning, producing long-form content, and offering next-gen performance for tasks like mathematics and coding.
• DeepSeek-Coder V2: A specialized LLM known for code generation and software-generating tasks.
• DeepSeek-Math: Fine-tuned effectively to deal with mathematical problem-solving and reasoning.

#9 Qwen

Qwen, developed by Alibaba, is one of the most robust large language model series. It is known for its reasoning, multilingual support, and cost-effective deployment. Being one of the top LLMs in China’s AI race, Qwen is known for open-source accessibility and high-end performance. With this, Qwen is giving tough competition to some of the popular LLMs like GPT-4 and Gemini.

Qwen 3, the latest version, is a significant upgrade from the previous version, with two different models. Qwen3-235B-A22B and Qwen3-30B-A3B. Both models are known for hybrid reasoning, multilingual support, enhanced agentic capabilities, 2x more pre-training than Qwen 2.5, and robust post-training. 

Here are some of the key aspects of Qwen’s latest version.

• Developer: Alibaba
• Parameters: 0.6B to 235B (MoE)
• Content Window: Up to 128K tokens
• Availability: Open-source (Apache 2.0); Hugging Face, GitHub, Alibaba Cloud
• Strength: Hybrid reasoning, multilingual, agentic tasks, cost efficiency
• License: Open-Source

Qwen 2.5 Max is an earlier version that delivers improved performance for enterprise-level natural processing tasks. The model defeats DeepSeek V3 in some popular benchmarks, and it is best for apps that need quick and precise responses with low latency. Due to its smaller size, the model can be deployed on devices without any heavy resources.

Other Popular LLMs released by Qwen

• Qwen 2.5 Coder: The model is fine-tuned well for code generation, debugging, and software engineering.
• Qwen 2.5 Match: High expertise in resolving advanced mathematical problems and logical reasoning.
• Qwen 2.5-VL: Process data types like text and images for document analysis and visual reasoning.
• Qwen 2.5 Omni: Handles various data types, such as text, images, video, and audio, for instant cross-model interactions.

#10 Falcon 2

Designed and built carefully by the UAE’s Technology Innovation Institute (TII), Falcon 2 is the most robust open-source LLM. It offers multilingual support and enhanced efficiency in vision-to-language capabilities, making it ideal for document analysis and visual assistance.

Falcon 2 is available in two variants: Falcon 2-11B (text-based) and Falcon 2-11 B-VLM (vision-language model). Falcon 2. Both models have multilingual support and efficient architecture; however, multimodal capabilities are available only in the VLM version. 

Falcon 2-11 B-VLM is one of the top LLMs in the market. Its image-to-text conversion feature is the best for various industries, such as healthcare, education, and accessibility applications.

Here are some of the key aspects of Falcon 2 you should know:

• Developer: UAE’s Technology Innovation Institute (TII)
• Parameters: 11 billion
• Content Window: Not specified
• Availability: Open-source (Apache 2.0-based license) on Hugging Face
• Strength: Multilingual support, vision-language capabilities (VLM), efficient inference
• License: Open-Source

Falcon 1 is the previous version with two variants: Falcon-7B and Falcon-40 B. Both models have text-only capability and a smaller content window of 2 K- 4 K tokens. Even though the models are good, they lack multimodal ability and are not as optimized as Falcon 2.

Other Popular Models by Falcon

• Falcon 40B: General-purpose text model suitable for content generation, customer service, and language translation.
• Falcon 180B: An advanced model suitable for research, coding, knowledge testing, and large-scale deployments.

#11 Command

Command is a highly scalable series of large language models designed and developed by Cohere. It is especially suited for enterprise-level performance, advanced tool use, and various language support. Command is one of the best LLMs right now for multiple use cases across different industries.

Command A is the most robust and the latest version of Command. The model is suitable for multiple tasks like tools use, agents, retrieval augmented generation (RAG), and multilingual use cases. Compared to the previous versions, Command A delivers 150x more throughput and holds only two GPUs for deployment, making it highly systematic and accessible for large-scale usage.

Let’s have a look at the key aspects of Command A.

• Developer: Cohere
• Parameters: 111 billion
• Content Window: 256K tokens
• Availability: Cohere API, Amazon Bedrock, Microsoft Azure AI Studio, Oracle Cloud, and open research weights on Hugging Face
• Strength: 
• License: Proprietary

Its previous version, Command R+, was released back in April 2024. The model has a robust multilingual understanding and performs well in RAG tasks. It even delivers enhanced alignment, reasoning, better performance, and accuracy. 

Other Popular LLMs released by Cohere

• Command R: A model optimized for conversational interaction and long, complex tasks. 
• Command7RB: The smallest and lightest model in the series, offering unparalleled performance in various types of tasks and good throughput. It is suitable for building latency-sensitive applications.

#12 Nova

Amazon Nova is the latest generation of foundation models with frontier intelligence. It offers exceptional performance at a cost-effective price and is suitable for generating text, images, and code using natural language prompts. 

Amazon Nova Premier is the latest released LLM. This capable and reasoning-focused model is great for complex tasks, streamlining work, and building AI agent applications. It supports different data types, such as text, images, and video processing, and works in parallel on model distillation for professional and affordable deployments. 

Nova Premier combines low latency, high capability, and extensive integration with AWS, making it suitable for enterprises that want scalable and cost-effective AI.

Here are some key aspects of Amazon Nova Premier that you should know.

• Developer: Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Parameters: Not Disclosed
• Content Window: 1 million tokens
• Availability: AWS Bedrock, API, and AWS-integrated services
• Strength:  Nova Premier is great at complex tasks that require deep context understanding, multistep planning, and precise execution; it is multimodal (supports text, images, and videos) and serves as a teacher model for distillation to create efficient variants like Nova Pro, Lite, and Micro
• License: Commercial (AWS)

Other Popular Amazon Nova Models

• Amazon Nova Micro: A text-only model suitable for language understanding, reasoning, code completion, brainstorming, and logical problem-solving.
• Amazon Nova Lite: This affordable model is great for processing different data types (images, video, and text). It’s a no-brainer for businesses that want to build high-volume applications.
• Amazon Nova Pro: This high-capability multimodal is great for multiple tasks, such as video summarization, Q&A, mathematical reasoning, software development, and more.

Final Thoughts on the Best LLMs

In the end, we have walked you through the best large language models, such as GPT, Claude, Grok, Llama, and other well-known models that are bringing excellent changes in the AI world. From the growing open-source models to the multimodal frontier models, LLMs are becoming more innovative, reliable, safer, faster, and specialized. With time, LLMs will be highly collaborative, intuitive, and integrated into daily life. 

Curious to know how LLMs can be great for you? We are there for you. Whether you are a startup or a business owner and want to build virtual assistants, content tools, apps, enterprise automation, or tailored chatbot experiences, Openxcell provides the best AI development services to turn your ideas into innovative products. So, why wait? Let’s use the most suitable LLMs to build your next-gen AI solution.