Introduction

In today’s digital world, Large Language Models (LLMs) are revolutionizing how we interact with information and services. LLMs are advanced AI systems designed to understand and generate human-like text based on vast amounts of data. They use deep learning techniques, particularly transformers, to perform various language tasks such as translation, text generation, and summarization. This article will explore free and paid LLMs for your daily tasks, covering both open-source as well as proprietary models. In the next blog, we’ll dive into LLM Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and how they simplify LLM integration for diverse applications.

Overview

• Understand LLMs and explore some of the most popular LLMs available today.
• Know the significance, costs, and applications of various LLMs.
• Compare the features and performance of popular LLMs, evaluating their scalability, pricing, and best-suited tasks for each model.

What are Large Language Models (LLMs)?

LLMs are advanced AI systems trained on vast datasets using billions of parameters. Built on the transformer architecture, they excel at various language tasks like translation, text generation, and summarization. The ” large ” in LLMs refers to their complex neural networks and extensive training data. These models can produce diverse outputs, including text, images, and videos. Users can access LLM capabilities through user-friendly chat interfaces like ChatGPT or via APIs.

Understanding Chat Interfaces

LLM chat interfaces are suitable for simple day-to-day tasks,  whereas LLM APIs allow developers to integrate these powerful AI tools into applications and services. This dual approach to accessibility has facilitated the widespread adoption of LLM technology across numerous industries and use cases.

Chat interfaces are digital platforms that enable real-time communication between users and systems, often powered by conversational AI or LLMs. They facilitate seamless interaction by allowing users to type or speak their queries, receiving responses instantly. These interfaces range from simple text-based applications, like live support chats, to advanced conversational interfaces in virtual assistants, capable of handling complex, multi-turn interactions and integrating multimedia elements.

In this first series of the article, we will be exploring the various LLMs available through chat interfaces. We will start with proprietary LLMs and then go into open-source LLMs.

Paid but Affordable LLMs for Businesses

LLMs have become increasingly accessible, with many providers offering free usage up to certain limits. Beyond these thresholds, users typically incur charges based on input and output tokens or usage metrics. Below is a list of popular LLMs, their developer, and the associated monthly costs.

Prices as of 10th October 20

Let’s now summarize the key features and best use cases for each of these LLMs.

GPT-4o

GPT-4o is a multilingual, multimodal generative pre-trained transformer launched by OpenAI in May 2024. It offers advanced capabilities across text, image, and audio processing. It is freely available with usage limits, which are significantly higher for ChatGPT Plus subscribers.

Key Features

1. Multimodal capabilities: It processes and generates text, video audio, and image.
2. Voice-to-Voice Processing: Supports direct voice-to-voice interaction natively, with Advanced Voice Mode in limited alpha release.

Best Suited For

According to the Chatbot Arena leaderboard GPT-4o is a great fit for the coding tasks.

GPT-4o Mini

GPT-4o mini is a free, streamlined version of OpenAI’s GPT-4o. It stands out for being an affordable LLM for everyone. This makes it particularly viable for high-volume and low-budget projects. While maintaining robust text and vision capabilities, GPT-4o mini also excels in long-context and function-calling tasks. It outperforms GPT-3.5 Turbo and other small models in reasoning, math, and coding benchmarks.

Key Features

1. Long-Context Processing: GPT-4o mini features a 128K token context window, accommodating extensive conversation histories, large code files, and other lengthy text. This extensive context capacity is a distinct advantage for context-heavy applications.
2. Instruction Hierarchy for Enhanced Security: GPT-4o mini utilizes a unique instruction hierarchy that improves security by resisting prompt injections and jailbreaks. This increases its reliability for deployment in customer query management.

Best Suited For

GPT4o Mini excels in mathematical reasoning. It scored a remarkable 87% on the MGSM benchmark, further establishing its superiority in the realm of small AI models.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet, part of Anthropic’s new Claude 3.5 model family, introduces enhanced intelligence, speed, and cost-efficiency. Available on Claude.ai, iOS, and through major cloud providers, the model outperforms its predecessor in reasoning, coding, and vision. It handles complex instructions, humor, and high-quality content generation with ease.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet includes a 200K token context window and a new Artifacts feature. This enables users to view and edit generated content in real-time, enhancing collaborative project workflows. To ensure safety and privacy, the model has undergone thorough testing by AI safety bodies in the UK and US. It adheres to stringent misuse reduction practices and incorporates insights from child safety experts. The model strictly avoids using user data in training without permission.

Key Features

1. Advanced Reasoning and Knowledge: Claude 3.5 has displayed top performance in evaluations like GPQA (graduate-level reasoning), MMLU (undergraduate-level knowledge), and HumanEval (coding proficiency).
2. Twice the Speed of Claude 3 Opus: Claude 3.5 operates at double the speed of previous Claude models, enabling faster execution for complex tasks and workflows.

Best Suited For

You can use Claude3.5 sonnet, for complex tasks such as context-sensitive customer support and orchestrating multi-step workflows.

Gemini 1.5 Flash

Gemini 1.5 Flash is a high-performance, lightweight open-source LLM within Google’s Gemini series. It is designed for fast and efficient text-based tasks across multiple applications, from real-time chat to language translation and summarization. Launched at Google I/O 2024, this model prioritizes speed and affordability, balancing a lower cost structure with competitive performance. Known for its optimized handling of smaller prompts and effective processing of long-context text inputs, Gemini 1.5 Flash offers developers a versatile tool for rapid, high-volume applications. It achieves this without compromising quality.

Key Features

1. Cost-Effective Pricing: This model is currently available for free. Gemini 1.5 Flash is priced to support large-scale deployments, providing a competitive option for high-volume tasks without high operational costs.
2. High Rate Limits: It supports robust request handling with up to 2,000 requests per minute. This makes it suitable for applications requiring rapid interactions, such as chatbots and customer service systems.

Best Suited For

If you need fast response times and low latency, Gemini 1.5 Flash is the better choice.

Gemini 1.5 Pro

Gemini 1.5 Pro is Google’s most powerful model in the Gemini series, equipped with a 2 million token-long context window and multimodal capabilities. With recent updates, Gemini 1.5 Pro is now 64% more affordable for input tokens. It also offers significant cost reductions for output and cached tokens on prompts under 128K, enhancing cost efficiency for large-scale applications. Optimized for speed and accuracy, this model demonstrates impressive improvements in complex benchmarks, especially in math, coding, and vision tasks. It is hence, a top choice for developers needing robust performance on demanding workloads.

Key Features

1. Extended Long Context Window: With a 2 million token capacity, Gemini 1.5 Pro can handle extremely large inputs, such as entire books or multi-hour videos. This makes it ideal for applications requiring deep analysis of extensive data.
2. Flexible Safety Filter Configuration: In this version, filters are optional, allowing developers to adjust the model’s response settings to meet their specific use case needs. This provides greater control over content output and enhances safety customization.

Best Suited For

If you are looking to solve high-complexity tasks like processing lengthy documents, advanced video understanding, and intricate data synthesis, Gemini 1.5 Pro is a great choice.

Mistral Large 2

Mistral Large 2 is a 123-billion-parameter model with 128k context windows, optimized for single-node inference. It excels in multilingual processing and code-generation tasks, performing strongly on advanced benchmarks in reasoning and reliability. Ideal for research-focused applications.

Key Features

1. High Context Window: Mistral Large 2 supports a 128k token context window, ideal for processing extended, complex inputs.
2. Optimized Performance: It’s optimized for single-node inference, boosting speed and efficiency in demanding tasks like multilingual processing and code generation.

Best Suited For

If you need to tackle complex, high-context tasks like multilingual NLP, extensive document analysis, or precise code generation, Mistral Large 2 is an excellent choice. Its 128k token context window and single-node inference optimization make it highly efficient for advanced research applications.

Open-source LLMs

Now that we have looked at some of the most popular proprietary LLMs, let’s take a look at popular open-source language models. Open-source LLMs provide flexibility and community engagement to foster development and research in the field of Generative AI.  The models are available free of cost however using them is associated with GPU and CPU computational cost. Below is a list of popular open-source LLMs along with their respective sources for access:

Let’s now summarize the key features and best use cases for each of these LLMs.

Llama-3.1-405B-Instruct

The Llama 3.1 405B instruct-tuned model is the largest open-source model in terms of the number of parameters. This model is well-tailored for text generation, reasoning, and language understanding tasks. It outperforms many proprietary and open-source conversation models currently in use when measured against industry standards. The Llama 3.1 405B-Instruct offers a strong solution for developers and businesses wanting state-of-the-art natural language processing capabilities in their applications.

Key Features

1. Optimized for Efficiency and Security: Through quantization and iterative training on 15 trillion tokens, Llama 3.1 balances performance with resource efficiency, supported by safety features like Llama Guard to mitigate misuse risks.
2. Enhanced Safety Configurations: This version introduces a flexible safety filter that allows developers to customize model responses based on specific requirements, providing tailored content control and improved customization for safer outputs.

Best Suited For

Long-form text summarization, multilingual conversational agents, and coding assistants. Meta LLama 3.1 is an good choice.

Qwen2.5-Coder-7B

With 7.61 billion parameters, Qwen2.5-Coder-7B is a specialized LLMs designed for coding activities. This robust model performs exceptionally well in debugging, reasoning, and code production over an astounding 92 programming languages. Qwen2.5-Coder-7B is trained on an extensive dataset of 5.5 trillion tokens, utilizing a variety of sources such as source code, text-code grounding, and synthetic data.

Key Features

1. Advanced Mathematical and General Capabilities: Qwen2.5-Coder-7B balances coding prowess with strong performance in mathematics and general tasks. This versatility supports complex problem-solving, from technical code debugging to abstract math reasoning, making it valuable for applications that intersect both domains​.
2. Optimal for Large-Scale Projects: With an extended 128,000-token context window, Qwen2.5-Coder-7B can handle extensive code reviews, large datasets, and detailed analysis with ease. This capacity is ideal for code agents or projects that require seamless comprehension of long inputs and multi-step processing.

Best Suited For

Qwen2.5-Coder-7B excels in applications needing large-scale code processing and reasoning, such as code agent development, multi-language support (92 programming languages), and complex code repair tasks.

DeepSeek-V2.5

An improved web interface and API make DeepSeek-V2.5, an advanced open-source model that combines general and coding capabilities available. DeepSeek-V2.5, outperforms GPT-4 and GPT-4-Turbo, on AlignBench. It boasts a 128K token context length and strong leaderboard rankings. Moreover,  its superior performance in math, coding, and reasoning, makes it a formidable rival to top models like the Mixtral 8x22B and LLama3-70B. It is accessible for free.

Key Features

1. Integrated Model Architecture: DeepSeek-V2.5 merges the capabilities of its predecessors, DeepSeek-V2-Chat and DeepSeek-Coder-V2-Instruct, making it highly versatile for both conversational and coding tasks. This combination allows it to perform well across benchmarks like AlpacaEval and HumanEval, showcasing significant improvements in language understanding and code generation.
2. Context Length & Code Handling: With a context window of up to 128,000 tokens, DeepSeek-V2.5 is optimized for handling extensive, multi-turn conversations and complex code tasks.

Best Suited For

With its robust language and coding capabilities, DeepSeek-V2.5 is ideal for multi-faceted applications like API development, technical support, coding tasks, and extended contextual conversations.

LLama 3.2 11B

An 11-billion-parameter multimodal AI, the Llama 3.2 11B Vision model is optimized for tasks that combine textual and visual input, such as question answering and image captioning. It has high accuracy in complicated picture analysis and the ability to integrate visual understanding with language processing, thanks to the pre-training on large image-text datasets. This makes it perfect for fields like content creation, AI-driven customer service, and research requiring sophisticated visual-linguistic AI solutions.

Key Features

1. Enhanced Instruction Following: LLama 3.2 11B excels in handling instruction-based tasks, benefiting from instruction-tuned improvements that allow it to follow complex prompts with precision. This capability makes it ideal for use cases that demand structured guidance, such as automated task workflows or interactive conversational agents​
2. System-Level Safety and Customization: Equipped with the LLama Guard 3 safety layer, LLama 3.2 11B includes built-in customization for filtering content, ensuring safer and more aligned responses. This feature allows developers to fine-tune the model’s responses for specific regulatory or compliance needs, making it suitable for applications in sensitive domains like healthcare and finance

Best Suited For

Financial Document Analysis and Reporting: The model’s capabilities in processing images alongside text make it particularly valuable for analyzing visual data embedded in financial documents, such as charts and tables. This feature allows LLama 3.2 11B to extract insights from graphical financial data, making it suitable for automated financial reporting and analysis​

Mistral 7B

Mistral 7B is an efficient 7-billion parameter open-weight model designed for high-performance text generation, reasoning, and language understanding. It surpasses many open-source models in language tasks, demonstrating a strong capacity for robust applications in NLP.

Key Features

1. Compact yet Powerful: Mistral 7B balances performance and efficiency, handling complex tasks with fewer parameters.
2. Open Weight Advantage: With open-access architecture, it’s customizable and adaptable for various NLP needs.

Best Suited For

Those seeking a compact, high-performing Large Language Model for tasks like conversational AI, summarization, and document analysis can use Mistral 7B.

Phi 3.5

Phi-3.5 is a multilingual, high-quality model in Microsoft’s Small Language Models (SLMs) series, optimized for cost-effective and high-performance language tasks. Tailored for tasks like text understanding and generation, it delivers robust results in multiple languages with improved efficiency and accuracy.

Key Features

1. Multilingual Expertise: Phi-3.5 excels in diverse language processing, making it ideal for global applications.
2. Optimized for Cost and Performance: Designed for affordable deployment with high-quality output across language tasks.

Best Suited For

Phi-3.5 is highly efficient in multilingual customer support scenarios. It can understand and respond accurately across various languages, making it ideal for businesses with global customer bases that need real-time, high-quality multilingual responses.

Conclusion

Large Language Models (LLMs) are essential in modern AI, with numerous providers offering tailored options for various applications. Both proprietary and open-source LLMs empower users to streamline workflows and scale solutions effectively, each offering unique features like multimodal processing and text generation to suit different performance and budget needs.

This guide includes a curated list of popular LLMs, their providers, and associated costs to help users make informed choices for their projects. In the next blog, we’ll dive into APIs, exploring how they simplify LLM integration for diverse applications.

Frequently Asked Questions