Free AI Model Leaderboard
The best free AI models ranked by measured quality: published benchmarks, human preference votes and live reliability. Powered by ZeroOptimize™.
How ZeroOptimize™ scores models
Published benchmarks
Artificial Analysis intelligence, coding and agentic indices, weighted 45 / 35 / 20
Human preference
LM Arena ratings from blind votes: overall, coding and instruction following
Both, not either
Benchmarks and votes often disagree; a model has to do well on both to lead
Unmeasured models
Inherit, discounted, from a measured sibling, or get a capped prior from real size and adoption. They never outrank a well-measured model
Fit for real work
Short context, tiny output limits and forced reasoning cost points; tool calling and JSON output earn a few
What is excluded
Classifiers, embedding and non-text models, and models past their expiry date
Our own reliability data
Failures and latency seen in production break ties between models of similar quality
Live health
Not part of the ranking: applied per request, so a busy model is stepped over for minutes, not demoted for a day
Your prompt
Models whose only free provider may train on prompts are excluded outright — OpenRouter names four, and dropping them cost us five otherwise-good models
Use these models through one endpoint
ZeroLimitAI sends each request to the best-ranked model answering right now, in the chat app or through an OpenAI-compatible API. No provider keys, no token costs. Free for 3 days, then from $19 a year.