Best AI at following instructions: 417 models ranked by blind votes
Prompts with explicit instructions on format, length or content that the answer has to keep to. Ranked by LMArena’s blind votes, every score with its margin of error and, beside it, the list price of each model on our price list.
Scores from LMArena, published 20 October 2026, under CC BY 4.0. Prices from each maker’s pricing page, read on 15 October 2026.
- Models ranked
- 417
- Level with the leader
- 4
- On our price list
- 1
- Published
- 20 October 2026
Level: the votes cannot separate it from the leader.
On LMArena’s Instructions board, Gemini 4 Argon (High) from Google leads with 1525 points from 1,748 blind votes, published 20 October 2026. 3 other models are statistically level with it. None of the models it ranks has an API price on our list yet.
Best AI at following instructions
Prompts with explicit instructions on format, length or content that the answer has to keep to.
| # | Model | Score | Votes | Per 1M tokens, in / out |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gemini 4 Argon (High)Google | 95% interval 1511 to 1540 | 1,748 | · |
| 1 | Claude Opus 5.5 (High)Anthropic | 95% interval 1508 to 1531 | 3,298 | · |
| 1 | Claude Opus 4.6 (High)Anthropic | 95% interval 1506 to 1516 | 26,659 | · |
| 1 | Claude Fable 5 (High)Anthropic | 95% interval 1502 to 1514 | 15,293 | · |
| 2 | Claude Fable 5.1 (Max)Anthropic | 95% interval 1490 to 1509 | 4,693 | · |
| 2 | Muse Wonder (Max)Meta | 95% interval 1481 to 1509 | 1,797 | · |
| 3 | Claude Opus 4.7 (High)Anthropic | 95% interval 1497 to 1508 | 22,751 | · |
| 4 | Claude Opus 4.6Anthropic | 95% interval 1493 to 1503 | 29,280 | · |
| 5 | Claude Opus 5 (High)Anthropic | 95% interval 1490 to 1501 | 24,456 | · |
| 5 | Claude Opus 5 (Max)Anthropic | 95% interval 1488 to 1501 | 11,699 | · |
| 5 | Claude Opus 4.7Anthropic | 95% interval 1487 to 1498 | 23,310 | · |
| 5 | GPT-5.6 Sol (xHigh)OpenAI | 95% interval 1485 to 1497 | 14,557 | · |
| 5 | Gemini 3.8 Flash (High)Google | 95% interval 1484 to 1497 | 14,854 | · |
| 5 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (xHigh)Anthropic | 95% interval 1475 to 1499 | 2,756 | · |
| 5 | GPT-6.1 Sol (Max)OpenAI | 95% interval 1471 to 1497 | 2,278 | · |
| 6 | Claude Opus 4.8 (High)Anthropic | 95% interval 1486 to 1496 | 22,656 | · |
| 6 | Kimi K3 (Max)Moonshot AI · open weights | 95% interval 1483 to 1496 | 11,432 | · |
| 7 | Gemini 3.7 Flash (High)Google | 95% interval 1479 to 1493 | 10,486 | · |
| 7 | Muse Spark 1.3 (Max)Meta | 95% interval 1477 to 1492 | 6,905 | · |
| 8 | Claude Opus 4.5 (High, 32K, 20251101)Anthropic | 95% interval 1477 to 1490 | 9,886 | · |
| 11 | MiMo-V2.6-ProXiaomi · open weights | 95% interval 1456 to 1487 | 1,391 | · |
| 12 | GLM-5.3 (Max)Z.ai · open weights | 95% interval 1470 to 1485 | 8,022 | · |
| 12 | DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-20260910 (Max)DeepSeek · open weights | 95% interval 1467 to 1485 | 4,725 | · |
| 13 | Gemini 3.1 Pro PreviewGoogle | 95% interval 1476 to 1484 | 44,333 | · |
| 15 | Claude Opus 4.8Anthropic | 95% interval 1473 to 1483 | 23,252 | · |
| 15 | GPT-5.5 (High)OpenAI | 95% interval 1472 to 1483 | 24,002 | · |
| 15 | Qwen3.8-MaxAlibaba | 95% interval 1468 to 1482 | 10,450 | · |
| 15 | GPT-6 Astra (Max)OpenAI | 95% interval 1463 to 1482 | 4,190 | · |
| 15 | Muse Spark 1.2 (xHigh)Meta | 95% interval 1461 to 1482 | 3,379 | · |
| 15 | Qwen3.7-Max-PreviewAlibaba | 95% interval 1449 to 1482 | 1,381 | · |
| 16 | GPT-5.5OpenAI | 95% interval 1470 to 1480 | 24,814 | · |
| 16 | Claude Sonnet 4.6Anthropic | 95% interval 1469 to 1480 | 23,706 | · |
| 16 | Claude Opus 4.5 (20251101)Anthropic | 95% interval 1469 to 1479 | 21,829 | · |
| 16 | Gemini 3.6 Flash (High)Google | 95% interval 1466 to 1479 | 13,098 | · |
| 17 | Muse Spark 1.1Meta | 95% interval 1467 to 1478 | 16,036 | · |
| 17 | Gemini 3 ProGoogle | 95% interval 1466 to 1479 | 11,692 | · |
| 17 | GLM-5.3-FlashZ.ai · open weights | 95% interval 1465 to 1478 | 12,492 | · |
| 19 | GPT-5.4 (High)OpenAI | 95% interval 1466 to 1476 | 21,863 | · |
| 20 | GLM-5.2 (Max)Z.ai · open weights | 95% interval 1464 to 1476 | 17,693 | · |
| 21 | Qwen3.5-Max-PreviewAlibaba | 95% interval 1460 to 1475 | 7,402 | · |
| 21 | Muse SparkMeta | 95% interval 1455 to 1473 | 4,741 | · |
| 22 | MiMo-V2.5-ProXiaomi · open weights | 95% interval 1462 to 1472 | 25,875 | · |
| 23 | Gemini 3.5 Flash (Medium)Google | 95% interval 1460 to 1472 | 17,046 | · |
| 23 | Claude Sonnet 5 (High)Anthropic | 95% interval 1460 to 1472 | 17,926 | · |
| 23 | DeepSeek-V4-Pro (High, 20260813)DeepSeek · open weights | 95% interval 1451 to 1472 | 3,482 | · |
| 24 | Gemini 3.5 Flash (High)Google | 95% interval 1459 to 1471 | 17,393 | · |
| 25 | GPT-5.6 Terra (xHigh)OpenAI | 95% interval 1458 to 1470 | 16,102 | · |
| 28 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 (High, 32K, 20250929)Anthropic | 95% interval 1459 to 1468 | 24,661 | · |
| 29 | GLM-5.1Z.ai · open weights | 95% interval 1457 to 1467 | 22,539 | · |
| 31 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 (20250929)Anthropic | 95% interval 1457 to 1466 | 24,365 | · |
| Further down the board: the other models on our price list | ||||
| 217 | gpt-oss-120bOpenAI · open weights | 95% interval 1317 to 1331 | 7,865 | · |
Where the ranking comes from
The scores, intervals and ranks are LMArena’s. The prices are ours.
- Blind votes
- LMArena puts the same prompt to two anonymous models and asks the person who wrote it to pick the better answer. The votes place every model on one scale, where a gap of 100 points means the higher model wins about 64 times in 100.
- Style control
- The scores discount answer length and formatting, so a model does not climb by writing more or by adding headings and lists.
- Shared ranks
- A model’s rank is one plus the number of models whose whole 95% interval sits above its own. Models the votes cannot separate share a rank, which is why several can be first.
- Settings
- A model can appear more than once, at different reasoning settings: the line under its name gives the entry as LMArena lists it. Entries with web search switched on are a different product and carry no price.
- Prices
- The list price per million tokens from the maker’s own pricing page, read on 15 October 2026. It is a price per token, not per answer: a higher reasoning setting spends more tokens on the same question.
Source: LMArena, leaderboard dataset (revision 9041150e, published 20 October 2026), licensed under CC BY 4.0. We change no score: we add the prices and the links to our model pages.
What each of them costs to run
The price list works three everyday jobs on every model, and our own benchmark runs them on real business tasks to see which pass.
Scores published 20 October 2026