Best Value LLM for Knowledge in 2026 — Cost-Adjusted Rankings
As of October 8, 2026, the top model in best value llm for knowledge on the BenchLM leaderboard is Mercury 2.5 with a score of 223.
Bottom line: Knowledge tasks don't require expensive reasoning models.
This ranking moves when models ship. Get the releases, price changes and retirements that affect your shortlist. Follow model changes
Full Rankings (97 ranked, 1 tracked)
Public preview through Mistral Studio; Mistral says the weights are due by the end of October 2026.
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tracked
How to choose
Key Takeaways
The best value model is Mercury 2.5 by Inception with a provisional Score/$ ratio of 223 (score: 33.5, output: $0.15/1M tokens).
The best open-weight model is MiMo-V2.6-Flash at position #2.
97 models are ranked here; 1 tracked model is listed without a position.
Score in Context
What these scores mean
Value scores divide the weighted knowledge score by output token price (per 1M tokens). Higher means more capability per dollar. Models with no listed price are excluded.
Known limitations
Value rankings favor cheap models even if absolute performance is modest. A model scoring half as well at one-tenth the price wins on value — but may not meet your quality bar. Always check raw scores alongside value rankings.
About this ranking
Ranking data as of October 8, 2026
Knowledge benchmarks test factual accuracy, expert-level science, and professional comprehension. This ranking divides each model's weighted knowledge score (GPQA, SuperGPQA, MMLU-Pro, HLE, FrontierScience, SimpleQA) by output token price. For RAG pipelines, research assistants, and Q&A systems where accurate knowledge retrieval matters but API costs add up, the value leaders here offer the best accuracy per dollar.
Unless noted otherwise, ranking surfaces on this page use BenchLM’s provisional leaderboard lane rather than the stricter sourced-only verified leaderboard.
Mercury 2.5 leads this ranking with a score of 223, followed by MiMo-V2.6-Flash (216.61) and GPT-6 Luna (128.52). There is a significant gap between the leading models and the rest of the field.
The best open-weight option is MiMo-V2.6-Flash (ranked #2 with a score of 216.61). Open-weight models are highly competitive in this category — self-hosting is a viable alternative to proprietary APIs.
This ranking uses provisional weighted averages across the scoring benchmarks in knowledge. For detailed model profiles, click any model name above. To compare two specific models head-to-head, use the "vs #" links.
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