In 2026 the question "what is the best AI model" has no single answer, and this month the boards cannot even agree on the frontier. The Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.3, on its September 30 snapshot, ranks Claude Opus 5.5 first. A separate relay of an AA leaderboard carried by llm-stats, dated October 9, puts GPT-5.6 Sol at the top on its own normalized scale. Both figures are real, both carry dates, and neither retires the other. This page is the per-modality quick reference to that field, written as third-party editorial: what each model is good at and what it last cost on a dated snapshot, followed by what is actually live on x-rush.ai, which is a much shorter list.
For the routing behavior itself, see Smart Routing Explained. For the long-form fall picture with full sourcing, see the Q4 2026 landscape snapshot, which supersedes the July edition of the 2026 model comparison.
October 2026 Quick Reference
The cheat sheet. Text prices are per million tokens, in then out. Every figure carries its snapshot date, and the page follows one rule throughout: the official Artificial Analysis index is the primary board, while relays such as llm-stats run secondary and say so in their own cells.
| Modality | Pick | What the dated snapshot says | |----------|------|------------------------------| | Text, frontier | Claude Opus 5.5 | #1 on AA v4.3 (2026-09-30); vendor claim: Fable 5.1-level on most work at 40% lower cost (2026-09-22) | | Text, frontier | GPT-5.6 Sol | 0.590, top of the relayed AA board; $5 / $30 per M tokens (2026-10-09) | | Text, tiers | GPT-5.6 Terra, Luna | 0.550 and 0.510; $2 / $12 and $0.20 / $1.20 per M tokens (2026-10-09) | | Text, open-source | MiMo-V2.6-Pro | AA open-source board #1 at 46 points, $0.13 per task, ahead of Kimi K3 and Qwen3.8 Max (2026-09-22, corroborated across four outlets) | | Text, budget | GLM-5.3-Flash, MiniMax M2.7, Gemini 3.7 Flash, Grok 4.5 | $0.15 / $0.50 (320B), $0.30 / $1.20 (205K context), $0.75 / $3.75, $2 / $6 per M tokens (sweep of 2026-10-11) | | Image | Nano Banana 2.1 | Native 4K, masked local repairs, multi-turn subject consistency, 1K/2K prices about halved; Arena T2I #4, +80 points (2026-10-06) | | Video | Kling 3.0 / O3 Pro, Veo 3.1 / 3.1 Fast, Runway Gen-4.5, LTX 2 Pro | Incumbent cast per the October sweep (2026-10-11); a rookie class is at the door, see below. Sora 2 / 2 Pro are discontinued (app April 26, API September 24, 2026) | | Music | Suno V6 (v6 / v6-wild / v6-mini) | Controllable consistency, natural-language local edits, audio separation (2026-09-09) | | Voice | Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS + Flash-Lite TTS; ElevenLabs | GA since 2026-09-22 with a 150-plus voice library and consent-gated cloning; ElevenLabs also launched ElevenMusic for music generation |
Treat the table as a menu. The right row depends on the job you typed, and every row comes with a stated shelf life: the January 2027 review re-checks each cell against fresher snapshots, and a cell that cannot be re-verified gets cut rather than aged in place.
Text Models
Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic) landed September 22 and held the v4.3 lead by September 30. The launch claim is the part worth weighing: most work at Fable 5.1's level, at 40% lower cost. Both halves are Anthropic's own numbers, so file them under vendor claims until an independent card exists; this page carries no absolute price for the model yet (needs-human-check for January). The fifteen-day trio closes with Sonnet 5.5 (September 28, claimed 30% faster and 30% cheaper) and Haiku 5.5 (October 7), the budget end of the family.
GPT-5.6 Sol (OpenAI) reads 0.590 on the October 9 relay, at $5 in and $30 out per million tokens. The tier spread underneath is the practical story: Terra scores 0.550 at $2 / $12, Luna 0.510 at $0.20 / $1.20. One generation spans a 25-fold input spread for a 0.080 score move — match the tier to the task, or the spread shows up on the invoice.
MiMo-V2.6-Pro (Xiaomi) is the open-source headline of the quarter: first on the AA open-source board at 46 points, first among domestic models, $0.13 per task, with Kimi K3 and Qwen3.8 Max behind it. The figures first ran September 22 and were corroborated by four outlets; the same flagship also sits third among open models on Code Arena.
The budget shelf, from the October 11 sweep: GLM-5.3-Flash at $0.15 / $0.50 for a 320B model, MiniMax M2.7 at $0.30 / $1.20 with a 205K context window, Gemini 3.7 Flash at $0.75 / $3.75, and Grok 4.5 at $2 / $6. Inkling-Small (276B parameters, Thinking Machines Lab) is the new name this page cannot score yet; it waits for the January review under a needs-human-check flag.
Image Models
Nano Banana 2.1 (Google) shipped October 6 and replaced the retired 2.0 generation. The changelog covers native 4K output, local repairs through masks, subject consistency that survives multi-turn edits, and Chinese text rendering in visibly better shape. The 1K and 2K price tiers dropped to roughly half. On Arena's text-to-image board the update sits fourth, up 80 points, and Google kept Nano Banana Pro on the shelf for complex design work. It is also one of the two engines you can use inside x-rush today; the last section has the detail.
ChatGPT Image 2 (OpenAI) was our July card's image story, still worth one line: Elo 1512 and a 242-point lead on that month's board. This page has no fresh October read on where it stands after the 2.1 shake-up, so it keeps its July number and a needs-human-check flag instead of a re-rank built on stale data.
Video Models
The incumbent cast held through October: Kling 3.0 and O3 Pro, Veo 3.1 and 3.1 Fast, Runway Gen-4.5, LTX 2 Pro. The one departure: Sora 2 and 2 Pro are discontinued — the app on April 26, 2026, the API on September 24. The rookie class is what the fall actually added: Kling 4.0 reported as close (a WaveSpeed guide dated September 27), Seedance 2.5 with a Video Edit mode, Wan 2.5 and WAN 3.0, MiniMax H3 and H3 Max, Gemini Omni Flash and 1.1, and Flux 3 Video. None of the rookies carries a verified price card in this file yet.
The July card here priced Veo 3.1 at $0.05-0.15 per second and Kling 3.0 at about $0.03-0.15. Those were July list prices; they stay flagged needs-human-check for January rather than being reprinted as current.
Music and Voice Models
Suno V6 has been the current family since September 9, and it splits three ways: v6 for controllable, consistent output; v6-wild when you want the model to wander; v6-mini free and lightweight. The editing layer is the quieter upgrade: natural-language local edits, single-line lyric changes, multimodal input, and audio separation, with compliance hardening underneath. It is the second engine live on x-rush (Music Gen), as detailed below — and on the platform that engine delivers finished tracks, not stem files.
Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS and Flash-Lite TTS reached general availability September 22: studio-grade positioning, regional dialect handling, voice design, a 150-plus voice library, and cloning that only runs with the subject's consent. ElevenLabs spent the quarter expanding its video aggregation and launching ElevenMusic, its own music generator, so its catalog now spans voice and music. Both remain third-party services from this page's standpoint.
What Runs on x-rush Today
Two rows of this page are product facts. The rest is editorial. As of the October 11, 2026 confirmation, the integrated list is:
| Capability | Engine | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Image Studio and Character & Scene | Nano Banana 2.1 | Live — you can generate with it on x-rush today |
| Music Gen | Suno V6 | Live — you can generate with it on x-rush today |
Everything else above is commentary about other companies' models, and nothing on this page should be read as routing instructions for the platform. Models that look interesting go through internal evaluation on x-rush's own task sets before any of them reaches a workflow — an admission process, not a promise — so there is no date to watch and no queue to check. When something is adopted, it happens inside the routing layer: same features, same flat prices, nothing to relearn.
The prices, meanwhile, never mention engines. Generation is billed in flat credits per output type, quoted before anything executes: 0.5 for a text job, 1 for an image, 2 for an audio job, 5 for a music track, 10 for a video clip. Workflow Copilot's assistance draws on a separate pool metered at 0.5 credits per 10 successful assists. Plans set capacity, not prices: one concurrent task on Free, two on Lite, three on Pro. If consistency or compliance is the worry, the controls you actually hold are the feature choice, the reusable characters and scenes your project stores, and the version history every result keeps. And if a better model than any of these ships next month, adopting it is an internal routing change; your prices and your workflow stay put.
Where the Numbers Come From and When They Expire
Every figure above traces to a dated snapshot: the AA Intelligence Index v4.3 via datalearner (September 30), the llm-stats relay (October 9), the Google changelog for Nano Banana 2.1 (October 6), the Suno V6 coverage (September 9), the Gemini 3.8 TTS availability notes (September 22), and an October 11 sweep for the budget shelf and the video field. Where boards disagree, both are named; the official AA index is primary and relays are labeled as relays. Anything untraceable carries a needs-human-check flag inline instead of a confident number.
Prices rot fastest, so one example to calibrate by: the July card of our GPT-5.6 deep dive listed Terra at $2.50 / $15 and Luna at $1 / $6, and the October 9 relay prices the same tiers at $2 / $12 and $0.20 / $1.20. One quarter, that drift.
This page goes back under full review on January 12, 2027. If that review cannot be done properly, the ranking tables come down and what remains is model-neutral guidance, which ages slower.