Live ranking, refreshed every 2 days
Best AI Models for Search
As of August 24, 2026, the top-ranked model on LMArena's search leaderboard is gpt-5.6-sol-xhigh by OpenAI with a score of 1,256, 27 points ahead of claude-fable-5 by Anthropic.
Updated October 13, 2026. Leaderboard data from August 24, 2026.
Ranking: top 10 models
Scores come from blind head-to-head votes on LMArena's search leaderboard. Rank is LMArena's published rank, which accounts for confidence intervals, so several models can share a rank. The top 10 are shown below, and ranks 11 to 34 follow in the expandable list.
| Rank | Model | Lab | Score | Votes | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | gpt-5.6-sol-xhigh | OpenAI | 1,256 ±8 | 29,663 | Proprietary |
| 2 | claude-fable-5 | Anthropic | 1,229 ±8 | 41,795 | Proprietary |
| 3 | gpt-5.5-search | OpenAI | 1,224 ±6 | 89,873 | Proprietary |
| 4 | claude-opus-4-6-search | Anthropic | 1,223 ±5 | 134,699 | Proprietary |
| 5 | claude-opus-4-7 | Anthropic | 1,212 ±6 | 91,394 | Proprietary |
| 6 | gemini-3.1-pro-grounding | 1,208 ±5 | 113,282 | Proprietary | |
| 7 | grok-4.20-multi-agent-beta-0309 | xAI | 1,205 ±5 | 109,553 | Proprietary |
| 8 | grok-4.5 | xAI | 1,202 ±7 | 31,505 | Proprietary |
| 9 | gemini-3-pro-grounding | 1,201 ±6 | 37,024 | Proprietary | |
| 10 | claude-sonnet-4-6-search | Anthropic | 1,201 ±5 | 134,905 | Proprietary |
Show ranks 11 to 34
Rank Model Lab Score License 11 grok-4.20-beta1 xAI 1,197 ±6 Proprietary 12 claude-sonnet-5-search Anthropic 1,196 ±7 Proprietary 13 claude-opus-4-8 Anthropic 1,195 ±6 Proprietary 14 gpt-5.4-search OpenAI 1,195 ±6 Proprietary 15 grok-4-1-fast-search xAI 1,194 ±5 Proprietary 16 ernie-5.1 Baidu 1,193 ±10 Proprietary 17 grok-4.3 xAI 1,193 ±5 Proprietary 18 o3-search OpenAI 1,192 ±7 Proprietary 19 gemini-3-flash-grounding Google 1,191 ±5 Proprietary 20 claude-opus-4-5-search Anthropic 1,187 ±6 Proprietary 21 gpt-5.1-search OpenAI 1,183 ±5 Proprietary 22 gpt-5-search OpenAI 1,183 ±8 Proprietary 23 claude-sonnet-4-5-search Anthropic 1,175 ±5 Proprietary 24 claude-opus-4-1-search Anthropic 1,167 ±5 Proprietary 25 gpt-5.2-search OpenAI 1,162 ±6 Proprietary 26 grok-4-fast-search xAI 1,160 ±5 Proprietary 27 claude-opus-4-search Anthropic 1,151 ±6 Proprietary 28 ppl-sonar-pro-high Perplexity 1,143 ±6 Proprietary 29 gemini-2.5-pro-grounding Google 1,142 ±5 Proprietary 30 ppl-sonar-reasoning-pro-high Perplexity 1,138 ±6 Proprietary 31 gpt-5.2-search-non-reasoning OpenAI 1,137 ±6 Proprietary 32 grok-4-search xAI 1,121 ±6 Proprietary 33 api-gpt-4o-search OpenAI 1,081 ±11 Proprietary 34 diffbot-small-xl Diffbot 1,062 ±9 Open weights
Showing the top 34 of 34 models on this leaderboard. Data from August 24, 2026.
Best model by lab
Each lab's highest-ranked model on this leaderboard, and how far it sits from the top.
| Lab | Best model | Rank | Score | Behind #1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | gpt-5.6-sol-xhigh | 1 | 1,256 | Leader |
| Anthropic | claude-fable-5 | 2 | 1,229 | 27 pts |
| gemini-3.1-pro-grounding | 6 | 1,208 | 48 pts | |
| xAI | grok-4.20-multi-agent-beta-0309 | 7 | 1,205 | 51 pts |
| Baidu | ernie-5.1 | 16 | 1,193 | 62 pts |
| Perplexity | ppl-sonar-pro-high | 28 | 1,143 | 113 pts |
| Diffbot | diffbot-small-xl | 34 | 1,062 | 194 pts |
Which AI lab leads?
The lab with the most models at the top of the board is the one with the deepest bench, not only the single best model.
Anthropic holds 4 of the top 10 models (40%).
Models in the top 10 by lab
Show data table
| Lab | Top 10 |
|---|---|
| Anthropic | 4 |
| 2 | |
| OpenAI | 2 |
| xAI | 2 |
Open vs proprietary: how big is the gap?
The best open-weight model is diffbot-small-xl by Diffbot at 1,062, 194 points behind the best proprietary model, gpt-5.6-sol-xhigh by OpenAI at 1,256. Their 95% confidence intervals do not overlap, so the gap is statistically meaningful.
33 proprietary models rank above the best open-weight model, and 0 of the top 20 are open-weight.
Open-weight here means any license other than Proprietary, including licenses with usage limits. It is a broader definition than the OSI one.
Other leaderboards
LMArena runs separate arenas for different jobs. The best model for one is often not the best for another.
Other arenas
- Text (overall)
- WebDev: claude-opus-5.5-max by Anthropic, 1,813
- Vision: claude-fable-5-high by Anthropic, 1,308
- Document: claude-fable-5 by Anthropic, 1,499
- Text to image: gpt-image-2.5-sunburst by OpenAI, 1,425
- Image editing: gpt-image-2.5-sunburst by OpenAI, 1,524
- Text to video: gemini-omni-1.1-flash by Google, 1,516
Text arena by category
How to read this leaderboard
The search arena compares models that can browse the web. People vote on answers to questions that need current information, so it rewards retrieval and citation as well as writing.
- Scores come from blind votes
- LMArena shows a person two anonymous answers to the same prompt and asks which is better. Those head-to-head votes are fitted with a Bradley-Terry model, the statistical successor to Elo, to give each model one arena score. On the Elo scale LMArena uses, a 100-point lead means the higher model is expected to win about 64% of matchups.
- Confidence intervals decide ties
- Every score carries a 95% confidence interval. When two intervals overlap, the order of those two models is not settled. LMArena's rank column already accounts for this, which is why more than one model can hold the same rank.
- Why it differs from usage share
- A high rank does not mean many people use a model. Usage depends on price, distribution and habit. For adoption rather than quality, see AI market share.
Methodology and source
All rankings are read from the LMArena leaderboard dataset on Hugging Face, published by LMArena (formerly Chatbot Arena) under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Credit for the underlying votes, scores and confidence intervals belongs to LMArena. Essentras is not affiliated with LMArena.
This page reads the search_style_control subset, category overall, from the dataset's latest split. Scores, intervals, ranks, vote counts and license labels are shown as published. Essentras adds the grouping by lab and the derived figures on this page: gaps, lab shares, open vs proprietary and, on the main page, the history of who held #1.
Data refreshes automatically every 2 days. If the source cannot be reached, the page falls back to the last saved copy and says so at the top. Models are never merged or renamed; model and lab names appear exactly as LMArena publishes them.
Open-weight means any license other than Proprietary. History is limited to what the dataset records: the style-controlled text leaderboard from August 28, 2024. We do not scrape any other ranking site.
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Frequently asked questions
What is the best AI model for AI search?
As of August 24, 2026, gpt-5.6-sol-xhigh by OpenAI ranks first on LMArena's search leaderboard with a score of 1,256. Rankings move as models and votes are added, so check the table above for the current order.
Which AI lab leads for AI search?
Anthropic holds 4 of the top 10 models (40%), ahead of Google (2), OpenAI (2), and xAI (2).
Is the best open-source model close to the best proprietary model?
The best open-weight model is diffbot-small-xl by Diffbot at 1,062, 194 points behind the best proprietary model, gpt-5.6-sol-xhigh by OpenAI at 1,256. 33 proprietary models rank above the best open-weight model, and 0 of the top 20 are open-weight. Their 95% confidence intervals do not overlap, so the gap is statistically meaningful. "Open" here means any license other than Proprietary, which is broader than the OSI definition.
What does this leaderboard measure?
The search arena compares models that can browse the web. People vote on answers to questions that need current information, so it rewards retrieval and citation as well as writing.
How often does this leaderboard update?
This page re-reads LMArena's dataset every 2 days. LMArena publishes a new snapshot when it has gathered enough votes or added models, so the date at the top shows the latest published data.
Models rank themselves. What do they say about you?
A leaderboard shows which AI models are strongest. It does not show what those models tell your customers about your company. Run the free check and see the answers.