Agent workflow guide
Best AI Models for Agents
Agentic work is not just "best benchmark wins." You need strong tool use, long-context memory, reliability, and sane cost under repeated calls.
GPT-5.5
Best for: Complex reasoning
Tool use: 9.7 • Reasoning: 9.8 • Context: 1M
OpenAI flagship. Strong coding and reasoning.
Claude Opus 4.8
Best for: Complex reasoning
Tool use: 9.6 • Reasoning: 9.8 • Context: 1M
Anthropic flagship for complex agentic coding. Adaptive thinking.
GPT-5.4
Best for: Coding
Tool use: 9.7 • Reasoning: 9.5 • Context: 1M
Strong coding performance. Excellent tool integration.
Gemini 3.5 Flash
Best for: Fast multimodal agents
Tool use: 9.4 • Reasoning: 9.4 • Context: 1M
Current stable Gemini flagship for speed. Strong search and grounding.
Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview
Best for: Multimodal tasks
Tool use: 9.3 • Reasoning: 9.5 • Context: 1M
Preview Pro model. Strong multimodal.
Grok 4.3
Best for: Long context
Tool use: 9 • Reasoning: 9.3 • Context: 1M
Current xAI flagship. Strong agentic tool calling.
GPT-OSS-120B
Best for: Self-hosted
Tool use: 9 • Reasoning: 9.2 • Context: 128K
Open weights from OpenAI. Runs on single 80GB GPU.
Fast picks
- GPT-5.5 for highest-end planning and hard multi-step work
- Claude Opus 4.8 for autonomous coding, review, and professional work where reliability matters most
- GPT-5.4 for strong operator-style tool use at lower cost
- Gemini 3.5 Flash for fast multimodal agents with search grounding
- Grok 4.3 for web/X-aware agents with a 1M-token context window
- GPT-OSS-120B for private self-hosted agent systems