Best LLM for Reasoning in 2026

Ranked by composite reasoning score averaging GPQA, MATH, AIME 2025, and AIME 2024. These benchmarks test graduate-level science, competition mathematics, and multi-step logical reasoning.

Updated automatically as new models release. Full benchmark leaderboard →

1
97.0%
avg
2
95.3%
avg
3
94.6%
avg
4
93.7%
avg
5
93.5%
avg
6
93.5%
avg
7
92.3%
avg
8
92.0%
avg
9
91.9%
avg
10
91.4%
avg
11
89.8%
avg
12
89.6%
avg
13
89.3%
avg
14
87.8%
avg
15
87.6%
avg
16
87.1%
avg
17
87.0%
avg
19
86.5%
avg
20
86.3%
avg
21
86.3%
avg
23
86.0%
avg
24
85.8%
avg
25
85.5%
avg
26
85.3%
avg
27
84.9%
avg
28
84.6%
avg
29
84.4%
avg
30
84.2%
avg
31
84.2%
avg
32
83.1%
avg
34
81.7%
avg
35
81.5%
avg
36
81.5%
avg
37
80.9%
avg
38
80.8%
avg
39
79.3%
avg
41
76.5%
avg
42
76.2%
avg
43
73.7%
avg
44
73.3%
avg
45
70.7%
avg
46
70.7%
avg
47
70.7%
avg
48
69.0%
avg
49
66.6%
avg
50
65.1%
avg
51
64.5%
avg
52
62.9%
avg
53
61.3%
avg
55
58.0%
avg
56
57.4%
avg
57
56.0%
avg
58
54.3%
avg
59
45.8%
avg
60
44.4%
avg
61
42.0%
avg
62
40.5%
avg
63
25.7%
avg

What makes a good reasoning model?

Reasoning benchmarks test whether a model can solve multi-step problems requiring planning, logic, and domain knowledge — not just pattern matching or retrieval.

  • GPQA (Diamond) — Questions written by PhD-level experts in biology, chemistry, and physics. Designed so that non-experts who Google the answer still fail. The gold standard for deep scientific reasoning.
  • MATH — Competition mathematics at AMC/AIME difficulty. Tests multi-step algebraic and geometric reasoning.
  • AIME 2025 — The American Invitational Math Exam, 2025 edition. 30 hard problems, integer answers. Most recent math benchmark — 2025 numbers are resistant to training data contamination.
  • AIME 2024 — Same format, one year earlier. Used alongside 2025 to give a more stable picture of math reasoning capability.

For tasks involving complex analysis, research, legal and financial reasoning, or scientific work, a high GPQA score is the best predictor of real-world performance.

Also see: Best Coding LLM, Best Cheap LLM, Compare any two models.