Best Small AI Models

Small AI models (under 10B parameters) ranked by benchmark score. Lightweight models you can run locally.

Models

Providers

Open Source

$0.15

Median $/1M in

Top 3

Full Rankings

#	Model	Avg	$/1M in	Context
1	o4 Mini High🇺🇸 OpenAI	72.0	$1.10	200K
2	phi-3-small 7.4B🇺🇸 MicrosoftOpen	67.4	N/A	0K
3	Grok 3 Mini Beta🇺🇸 xAI	64.8	$0.30	131K
4	Gemini 2.0 Flash Lite🇺🇸 Google DeepMind	64.2	$0.07	1.0M
5	Qwen3 4B Thinking 2507🇨🇳 AlibabaOpen	60.6	N/A	0K
6	o3 Mini High🇺🇸 OpenAI	60.4	$1.10	200K
7	GPT-5.1-Codex-Mini🇺🇸 OpenAI	60.4	$0.25	400K
8	Mixtral 8x7B Instruct🇫🇷 Mistral AIOpen	57.8	$0.54	33K
9	Mixtral 8x7B🇫🇷 Mistral AIOpen	54.3	N/A	0K
10	phi-3-mini 3.8B🇺🇸 MicrosoftOpen	54.3	N/A	0K
11	DeepSeek V4.1 Flash🇨🇳 DeepSeekOpen	54.1	$0.05	1.0M
12	Grok-3 mini🇺🇸 xAI	53.7	N/A	0K
13	Qwen2.5-Coder-3B🇨🇳 Alibaba QwenOpen	52.2	N/A	0K
14	o4 Mini (batch)🇺🇸 OpenAI	52.1	$0.55	200K
15	GPT-5 Mini🇺🇸 OpenAI	51.5	$0.25	400K
16	DeepSeek-Coder-V2-Lite-Base🇨🇳 DeepSeekOpen	50.8	N/A	0K
17	Qwen2 7B Instruct🇨🇳 AlibabaOpen	50.5	N/A	0K
18	Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite🇺🇸 Google DeepMind	48.6	$0.10	1.0M
19	o4 Mini🇺🇸 OpenAI	48.6	$1.10	200K
20	Qwen2 VL 7B Instruct🇨🇳 AlibabaOpen	47.3	N/A	0K
21	Qwen3 4B Instruct 2507🇨🇳 AlibabaOpen	47.2	N/A	0K
22	Qwen3 8B🇨🇳 Alibaba QwenOpen	45.3	$0.12	131K
23	Meta Llama 3 8B Instruct🇺🇸 MetaOpen	45.2	N/A	0K
24	Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite🇺🇸 Google DeepMind	45.0	$0.25	1.0M
25	Qwen2.5 Coder 7B Instruct🇨🇳 AlibabaOpen	44.4	N/A	0K
26	Qwen2.5 Coder 7B Instruct🇨🇳 Alibaba QwenOpen	44.4	$0.03	33K
27	Meta Llama 3 8B🇺🇸 MetaOpen	44.2	N/A	0K
28	GPT-4o-mini (2024-07-18)🇺🇸 OpenAI	43.2	$0.15	128K
29	DeepSeek R1 Distill Llama 8B🇨🇳 DeepSeekOpen	41.6	N/A	0K
30	Mistral 7B V0.1🇫🇷 Mistral AIOpen	41.6	N/A	0K
31	U Baichuan 2-7B Unknown	40.3	N/A	0K
32	GPT-5 Nano🇺🇸 OpenAI	39.1	$0.05	400K
33	Qwen3.5-9B🇨🇳 Alibaba QwenOpen	39.0	$0.17	262K
34	Qwen2.5 Coder 1.5B Instruct🇨🇳 AlibabaOpen	38.8	N/A	0K
35	GPT-5.4 Mini🇺🇸 OpenAI	37.7	$0.75	400K
36	GPT-4.1 Mini🇺🇸 OpenAI	36.7	$0.40	1.0M
37	Gemma 2 2b It🇺🇸 Google DeepMindOpen	36.4	N/A	0K
38	Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite🇺🇸 Google DeepMind	36.1	$0.30	1.0M
39	Gemma 2 9B🇺🇸 Google DeepMindOpen	36.0	$0.03	8K
40	o1-mini🇺🇸 OpenAI	35.2	N/A	0K
41	o3 Mini (batch)🇺🇸 OpenAI	35.0	$0.55	200K
42	U XGen-7B Unknown	33.9	N/A	0K
43	GPT-5.4 Nano🇺🇸 OpenAI	33.6	$0.20	400K
44	DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 7B🇨🇳 DeepSeekOpen	32.7	N/A	0K
45	o3 Mini🇺🇸 OpenAI	32.4	$1.10	200K
46	open_llama_7b🇺🇸 MetaOpen	32.0	N/A	0K
47	Llama 3 8B Instruct🇺🇸 MetaOpen	30.8	$0.14	8K
48	Phi 4 Mini Instruct🇺🇸 MicrosoftOpen	29.4	N/A	0K
49	Phi 4 Mini Instruct🇺🇸 MicrosoftOpen	29.4	$0.08	131K
50	GPT-4.1 Nano🇺🇸 OpenAI	29.3	$0.10	1.0M
51	GPT-4o-mini🇺🇸 OpenAI	29.3	$0.15	128K
52	U Yi 6B UnknownOpen	29.2	N/A	0K
53	Gemma 2B🇺🇸 Google DeepMindOpen	29.1	N/A	0K
54	Qwen-1_8B🇨🇳 Alibaba QwenOpen	28.7	N/A	0K
55	Phi 3.5 Mini Instruct🇺🇸 MicrosoftOpen	28.2	N/A	0K
56	Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct🇺🇸 MicrosoftOpen	27.6	N/A	0K
57	Llama 2 7b Chat Hf🇺🇸 MetaOpen	27.3	N/A	0K
58	Qwen2.5 3B Instruct🇨🇳 Alibaba	27.2	N/A	0K
59	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct🇨🇳 Alibaba QwenOpen	24.6	$0.10	33K
60	Llama 3.1 8B Instruct🇺🇸 MetaOpen	24.3	$0.02	131K
61	Llama 3.2 3B Instruct🇺🇸 MetaOpen	24.2	$0.05	131K
62	U Baichuan1-7B Unknown	23.7	N/A	0K
63	Llama 2 7b Hf🇺🇸 MetaOpen	23.6	N/A	0K
64	CodeQwen1.5-7B🇨🇳 Alibaba QwenOpen	23.1	N/A	0K
65	Hermes 2 Pro - Llama-3 8B🇺🇸 nousresearchOpen	22.1	$0.14	8K
66	Qwen2.5 Coder 0.5B Instruct🇨🇳 AlibabaOpen	20.8	N/A	0K
67	Mistral 7B Instruct V0.2🇫🇷 Mistral AIOpen	18.5	N/A	0K
68	Qwen2.5 1.5B Instruct🇨🇳 AlibabaOpen	18.4	N/A	0K
69	U RedPajama-INCITE-7B-Base Unknown	18.0	N/A	0K
70	DeepSeek Coder 6.7B🇨🇳 DeepSeekOpen	16.7	N/A	0K
71	U Magistral Small 1.1 Unknown	16.5	N/A	0K
72	Qwen2 1.5B Instruct🇨🇳 AlibabaOpen	14.1	N/A	0K
73	U stablelm-tuned-alpha-7b Unknown	13.6	N/A	0K
74	Mistral 7B Instruct v0.1🇫🇷 Mistral AIOpen	12.8	$0.11	3K
75	L Vicuna 7b V1.5 LMSYSOpen	10.9	N/A	0K
76	Gemma 2 2b🇺🇸 Google DeepMindOpen	10.4	N/A	0K
77	DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B🇨🇳 DeepSeekOpen	10.4	N/A	0K
78	Qwen2.5 0.5B Instruct🇨🇳 AlibabaOpen	10.1	N/A	0K
79	Llama 3.2 1B Instruct🇺🇸 MetaOpen	9.4	$0.03	60K
80	Llama 3.2 3B Instruct (free)🇺🇸 MetaOpen	8.7	Free	131K
81	Qwen2 0.5B🇨🇳 AlibabaOpen	7.2	N/A	0K
82	Qwen2 0.5B Instruct🇨🇳 AlibabaOpen	6.6	N/A	0K
83	Gemma 3 4B🇺🇸 Google DeepMindOpen	5.8	$0.05	131K
84	DeepSeek Coder 1.3B🇨🇳 DeepSeekOpen	3.2	N/A	0K
85	T TinyLlama 1.1B Chat V1.0 TinyLlamaOpen	2.8	N/A	0K

About this category

Small AI models under 10 billion parameters, ranked by benchmark score. These lightweight models can run on consumer hardware and edge devices while delivering surprisingly strong performance.

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Frequently asked questions

What are the best small AI models?

Small models under 10B parameters have improved dramatically. The leaderboard above ranks them by benchmark performance across coding, reasoning, and knowledge tasks.

Can small AI models run on my laptop?

Yes. Models under 10B parameters can run on modern laptops with 16GB+ RAM using tools like Ollama, llama.cpp, or LM Studio.

How do small models compare to large ones?

Small models trade some capability for speed and efficiency. The best small models now match or exceed what large models achieved just one year ago.

Back to all models