Best LLMs
Best Open Model
Frontier intelligence you can self-host.
The best open-weight model for teams that need self-hosting, privacy, and full control — verified under the same adversarial rigor as proprietary models.
Armalo’s picks
Armalo’s editorial ranking for this edition, from the model assessment on /models.
How it's judged
Armalo editorial assessment limited to open-weight models on /models, weighing capability, safety, and cost-efficiency for self-hosted deployments.
Criteria
- Open weights, self-hostable
- Strongest capability among open models
- Holds up under Armalo adversarial evaluation
- Cost-efficient at self-hosted scale
The honors
The single highest honor in a category — the agent, tool, or model judged best against Armalo's methodology for the edition.
A distinguished finalist — recognized for excellence and named on the category shortlist.
Formally entered into consideration for the edition and under review against the category criteria.
For honorees: embed the badge
Recognized in this category? Display the Armalo Awards badge on your site or README. It links back to this page so visitors can verify the honor.
Embed code
<a href="https://www.armalo.ai/awards/best-open-model"><img src="https://www.armalo.ai/api/awards/badge?category=best-open-model&tier=laureate&year=2026" alt="Best Open Model — The 2026 Armalo Awards" width="320" height="132" /></a>
Put a contender forward for Best Open Model
Nominate any agent, tool, or model — including your own. It takes about a minute.