Best Free AI Coding Models - Page 4

Laguna M.1 is Poolside’s most capable model for agentic coding, built and trained in-house for software development workflows. It is a 225B total-parameter Mixture of Experts model with 23B activated parameters, trained completely in-house on 30T tokens using 6,144 interconnected NVIDIA H200 GPUs. Poolside trained Laguna M.1 from scratch with its own data work, training codebase, and async on-policy reinforcement learning in its agent harness, all with agentic coding in mind. The model is designed to perform at its best inside Poolside’s coding agent, where it can reason through software tasks, interact with tools, edit code, run tests, and support longer autonomous development sessions. Laguna M.1 is built for developers and teams working on complex coding tasks that require stronger reasoning, architectural understanding, terminal use, and multi-step execution than lightweight models can provide.

CodeGen is an open-source model for program synthesis. Trained on TPU-v4. Competitive with OpenAI Codex.

StarCoder and StarCoderBase are Large Language Models for Code (Code LLMs) trained on permissively licensed data from GitHub, including from 80+ programming languages, Git commits, GitHub issues, and Jupyter notebooks. Similar to LLaMA, we trained a ~15B parameter model for 1 trillion tokens. We fine-tuned StarCoderBase model for 35B Python tokens, resulting in a new model that we call StarCoder. We found that StarCoderBase outperforms existing open Code LLMs on popular programming benchmarks and matches or surpasses closed models such as code-cushman-001 from OpenAI (the original Codex model that powered early versions of GitHub Copilot). With a context length of over 8,000 tokens, the StarCoder models can process more input than any other open LLM, enabling a wide range of interesting applications. For example, by prompting the StarCoder models with a series of dialogues, we enabled them to act as a technical assistant.

The next generation of our open source large language model. This release includes model weights and starting code for pretrained and fine-tuned Llama language models — ranging from 7B to 70B parameters. Llama 2 pretrained models are trained on 2 trillion tokens, and have double the context length than Llama 1. Its fine-tuned models have been trained on over 1 million human annotations. Llama 2 outperforms other open source language models on many external benchmarks, including reasoning, coding, proficiency, and knowledge tests. Llama 2 was pretrained on publicly available online data sources. The fine-tuned model, Llama-2-chat, leverages publicly available instruction datasets and over 1 million human annotations. We have a broad range of supporters around the world who believe in our open approach to today’s AI — companies that have given early feedback and are excited to build with Llama 2.

Code Llama is a large language model (LLM) that can use text prompts to generate code. Code Llama is state-of-the-art for publicly available LLMs on code tasks, and has the potential to make workflows faster and more efficient for current developers and lower the barrier to entry for people who are learning to code. Code Llama has the potential to be used as a productivity and educational tool to help programmers write more robust, well-documented software. Code Llama is a state-of-the-art LLM capable of generating code, and natural language about code, from both code and natural language prompts. Code Llama is free for research and commercial use. Code Llama is built on top of Llama 2 and is available in three models: Code Llama, the foundational code model; Codel Llama - Python specialized for Python; and Code Llama - Instruct, which is fine-tuned for understanding natural language instructions.

Grok-3 Mini, crafted by xAI, is an agile and insightful AI companion tailored for users who need quick, yet thorough answers to their questions. This smaller version maintains the essence of the Grok series, offering an external, often humorous perspective on human affairs with a focus on efficiency. Designed for those on the move or with limited resources, Grok-3 Mini delivers the same level of curiosity and helpfulness in a more compact form. It's adept at handling a broad spectrum of questions, providing succinct insights without compromising on depth or accuracy, making it a perfect tool for fast-paced, modern-day inquiries.

Mercury, the latest innovation from Inception Labs, is the first commercial-scale diffusion large language model (dLLM), offering a 10x speed increase and significantly lower costs compared to traditional autoregressive models. Built for high-performance reasoning, coding, and structured text generation, Mercury processes over 1000 tokens per second on NVIDIA H100 GPUs, making it one of the fastest LLMs available. Unlike conventional models that generate text one token at a time, Mercury refines responses using a coarse-to-fine diffusion approach, improving accuracy and reducing hallucinations. With Mercury Coder, a specialized coding model, developers can experience cutting-edge AI-driven code generation with superior speed and efficiency.

GPT-5-Codex is a version of GPT-5 further optimized for agentic coding within Codex, focusing on real-world software engineering tasks (building full projects from scratch, adding features & tests, debugging, large-scale refactors, and code reviews). Codex now moves faster, is more reliable, and works better in real-time across your development environments, whether in terminal/CLI, IDE extension, via the web, in GitHub, or even on mobile. GPT-5-Codex is the default model for cloud tasks and code review; developers can also opt to use it locally via Codex CLI or the IDE extension. It dynamically adjusts how much “reasoning time” it spends depending on task complexity; small, well-defined tasks are fast and snappy; more complex ones (refactors, large feature work) get more sustained effort. Code review is stronger; it catches critical bugs before shipping.

GPT-5.1 is the latest update in the GPT-5 series, designed to make ChatGPT dramatically smarter and more conversational. The release introduces two distinct model variants: GPT-5.1 Instant, which is described as the most-used model and is now warmer, better at following instructions, and more intelligent; and GPT-5.1 Thinking, which is the advanced reasoning engine that’s been tuned to be easier to understand, faster on straightforward tasks, and more persistent on complex ones. Users' queries are now routed automatically to the variant best-suited to the task. The update emphasizes not just improved raw intelligence but also enhanced communication style; the models are tuned to be more natural, enjoyable to talk to, and better aligned with user intents. The system card addendum notes that GPT-5.1 Instant uses “adaptive reasoning” that lets it decide when to think more deeply before responding, while GPT-5.1 Thinking adapts its thinking time accurately to the question at hand.

GPT-5.1-Codex-Max is the high-capability variant of the GPT-5.1-Codex series designed specifically for software engineering and agentic code workflows. It builds on the base GPT-5.1 architecture with a focus on long-horizon tasks such as full project generation, large-scale refactoring, and autonomous multi-step bug and test management. It introduces adaptive reasoning, meaning the system dynamically allocates more compute for complex problems and less for simpler ones, to improve efficiency and output quality. It also supports tool use (IDE-integrated workflows, version control, CI/CD pipelines) and offers higher fidelity in code review, debugging, and agentic behavior than general-purpose models. Alongside Max, there are lighter variants such as Codex-Mini for cost-sensitive or scale use-cases. The GPT-5.1-Codex family is available in developer previews, including via integrations like GitHub Copilot.

GPT-5.2 Thinking is the highest-capability configuration in OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 model family, engineered for deep, expert-level reasoning, complex task execution, and advanced problem solving across long contexts and professional domains. Built on the foundational GPT-5.2 architecture with improvements in grounding, stability, and reasoning quality, this variant applies more compute and reasoning effort to generate responses that are more accurate, structured, and contextually rich when handling highly intricate workflows, multi-step analysis, and domain-specific challenges. GPT-5.2 Thinking excels at tasks that require sustained logical coherence, such as detailed research synthesis, advanced coding and debugging, complex data interpretation, strategic planning, and sophisticated technical writing, and it outperforms lighter variants on benchmarks that test professional skills and deep comprehension.

GPT-5.2 Instant is the fast, capable variant of OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 model family designed for everyday work and learning with clear improvements in information-seeking questions, how-tos and walkthroughs, technical writing, and translation compared to prior versions. It builds on the warmer conversational tone introduced in GPT-5.1 Instant and produces clearer explanations that surface key information upfront, making it easier for users to get concise, accurate answers quickly. GPT-5.2 Instant delivers speed and responsiveness for typical tasks like answering queries, generating summaries, assisting with research, and helping with writing and editing, while incorporating broader enhancements from the GPT-5.2 series in reasoning, long-context handling, and factual grounding. As part of the GPT-5.2 lineup, it shares the same foundational improvements that boost overall reliability and performance across a wide range of everyday activities.

GPT-5.2 Pro is the highest-capability variant of OpenAI’s latest GPT-5.2 model family, built to deliver professional-grade reasoning, complex task performance, and enhanced accuracy for demanding knowledge work, creative problem-solving, and enterprise-level applications. It builds on the foundational improvements of GPT-5.2, including stronger general intelligence, superior long-context understanding, better factual grounding, and improved tool use, while using more compute and deeper processing to produce more thoughtful, reliable, and context-rich responses for users with intricate, multi-step requirements. GPT-5.2 Pro is designed to handle challenging workflows such as advanced coding and debugging, deep data analysis, research synthesis, extensive document comprehension, and complex project planning with greater precision and fewer errors than lighter variants.

Composer 1.5 is the latest agentic coding model from Cursor that balances speed and intelligence for everyday code tasks by scaling reinforcement learning approximately 20x more than its predecessor, enabling stronger performance on real-world programming challenges. It’s designed as a “thinking model” that generates internal reasoning tokens to analyze a user’s codebase and plan next steps, responding quickly to simple problems and engaging deeper reasoning on complex ones, while remaining interactive and fast for daily development workflows. To handle long-running tasks, Composer 1.5 introduces self-summarization, allowing the model to compress and carry forward context when it reaches context limits, which helps maintain accuracy across varying input lengths. Internal benchmarks show it surpasses Composer 1 in coding tasks, especially on more difficult issues, making it more capable for interactive use within Cursor’s environment.

GLM-5V-Turbo is a multimodal coding foundation model designed for vision-based coding tasks, capable of natively processing inputs such as images, video, text, and files while producing text outputs. It is optimized for agent workflows, enabling a full loop of understanding environments, planning actions, and executing tasks, and integrates seamlessly with agent frameworks like Claude Code and OpenClaw. It supports long-context interactions with a context length of 200K tokens and up to 128K output tokens, making it suitable for complex, long-horizon tasks. It offers multiple thinking modes for different scenarios, strong vision comprehension across images and video, real-time streaming output for improved interaction, and advanced function-calling capabilities for integrating external tools. It also includes context caching to enhance performance in extended conversations. In practical use, it can reconstruct frontend projects from design mockups.

Qwen3.6 is a large language model developed by Alibaba as part of its Qwen AI model family, designed for real-world applications and advanced reasoning tasks. It focuses on improving stability, usability, and performance compared to earlier versions. The model supports multimodal capabilities, allowing it to process and reason across text, images, and other data types. Qwen3.6 is particularly strong in coding and developer workflows, offering improved accuracy for complex programming tasks. It uses a mixture-of-experts architecture, enabling efficient performance while maintaining large-scale model capabilities. The model is designed to be deployable in production environments, including enterprise and cloud-based systems. It can be integrated into applications or run locally using open-weight variants. Overall, Qwen3.6 delivers a powerful, efficient, and versatile AI solution for modern use cases.

GPT-5-Codex-Mini is a compact and cost-efficient version of GPT-5-Codex designed to deliver roughly four times more usage with only a slight tradeoff in capability. It’s optimized for handling routine or lighter programming tasks while maintaining reliable output quality. Developers can access it through the CLI and IDE extension by signing in with ChatGPT, with API access coming soon. The system automatically suggests switching to GPT-5-Codex-Mini when users near 90% of their rate limits, helping extend uninterrupted usage. ChatGPT Plus, Business, and Edu users receive 50% higher rate limits, offering more flexibility for frequent workflows. Pro and Enterprise accounts are prioritized for faster processing, ensuring smoother, high-speed performance across larger workloads.