Best Image Understanding Models in 2026

This reporting page isolates visual reasoning and image understanding from the broader multimodal category. It prioritizes sourced benchmarks for diagrams, grounding, counting, real-world image QA, and multimodal math.

This page ranks models using only sourced image-understanding benchmarks in the reporting family.

According to BenchLM.ai, GPT-5.4 Pro leads this ranking with a score of 94, followed by Claude Mythos Preview (92.7) and Qwen3.5-122B-A10B (83.9). There is a significant gap between the leading models and the rest of the field.

The best open-weight option is Qwen3.5-122B-A10B (ranked #3 with a score of 83.9). Open-weight models are highly competitive in this category — self-hosting is a viable alternative to proprietary APIs.

This ranking is based on provisional overall weighted scores across BenchLM.ai's scoring formula tracked by BenchLM.ai. For detailed model profiles, click any model name below. To compare two specific models head-to-head, use the "vs #" links.

Full Rankings (22 models)

GPT-5.4 Pro
OpenAI·Proprietary·1.05M

94

sourced avg

Claude Mythos Preview
Anthropic·Proprietary·1M

92.7

sourced avg

Qwen3.5-122B-A10B
Alibaba·Open Weight·262K

83.9

sourced avg

4
Qwen3.5-27B
Alibaba·Open Weight·262K

82.3

sourced avg

5
Qwen3.5-35B-A3B
Alibaba·Open Weight·262K

81.4

sourced avg

6
Gemini 3 Pro
Google·Proprietary·2M

81

sourced avg

7
Qwen3.6 Plus
Alibaba·Proprietary·1M

80.6

sourced avg

8
Gemini 3.1 Pro
Google·Proprietary·1M

80.3

sourced avg

9
GPT-5.2
OpenAI·Proprietary·400K

79.5

sourced avg

10
Qwen3.5 397B
Alibaba·Open Weight·128K

79

sourced avg

11
Kimi K2.5
Moonshot AI·Open Weight·128K

78.5

sourced avg

12
Kimi K2.5 (Reasoning)
Moonshot AI·Proprietary·128K

78.5

sourced avg

13
GPT-5.4
OpenAI·Proprietary·1.05M

77.3

sourced avg

14
Gemma 4 31B
Google·Open Weight·256K

76.9

sourced avg

15
GPT-5.4 mini
OpenAI·Proprietary·400K

76.6

sourced avg

16
Muse Spark
Meta·Proprietary·262K

76.5

sourced avg

17
Gemma 4 26B A4B
Google·Open Weight·256K

73.8

sourced avg

18
Claude Opus 4.6
Anthropic·Proprietary·1M

70.9

sourced avg

19
Claude Opus 4.5
Anthropic·Proprietary·200K

70.6

sourced avg

20
Grok 4.20
xAI·Proprietary·2M

69.9

sourced avg

21
GPT-5.4 nano
OpenAI·Proprietary·400K

66.1

sourced avg

22
LFM2.5-VL-450M
LiquidAI·Open Weight·128K

55.7

sourced avg

Key Takeaways

The top model on this sourced reporting-family slice is GPT-5.4 Pro by OpenAI with an average of 94.

The best open-weight model is Qwen3.5-122B-A10B at position #3.

22 models are listed with sourced benchmark coverage in this reporting family.

Last updated: April 8, 2026

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