Vision LLMs

ChatGPT

Free cloud LLM for writing, research, and file-based analysis.

• Freemium
• cloud-llm
• chat-assistant
• multimodal

Best for: Daily writing, rewriting, and brainstorming, Quick research and summary work from uploaded files

Claude

Cloud LLM known for strong writing quality and explicit model-improvement controls.

• Freemium
• cloud-llm
• chat-assistant
• multimodal

Best for: Proposal and client communication drafting, Long-form editing and narrative refinement

DeepSeek-VL2

Mixture-of-experts local vision-language family for OCR, documents, charts, and grounded multimodal reasoning.

• Free
• local-inference
• open-weights
• self-hosted

Best for: Private visual document analysis, Multimodal document understanding

Gemini

Free cloud LLM with published daily prompt limits and research-focused workflows.

• Freemium
• cloud-llm
• chat-assistant
• multimodal

Best for: Research briefs and competitive scans, Long-form summarization and outline generation

Gemma 3

Multimodal Gemma family with 128K context and broad local deployment options under Gemma terms.

• Free
• local-inference
• open-weights
• on-device

Best for: Local assistants with manageable compliance processes, Multimodal summarization and extraction

Gemma 3n

Device-first Gemma branch with multimodal support, long context, and efficient E2B/E4B variants.

• Free
• local-inference
• open-weights
• on-device

Best for: Multimodal local assistant workflows, Privacy-sensitive visual assistant tasks

Gemma 4

Newest Gemma family with Apache-2.0 licensing, multimodal input, 256K context, and sparse on-device variants.

• Free
• local-inference
• open-weights
• on-device

Best for: Multimodal local assistant workflows, Multimodal document understanding

GLM (Z.AI)

Z.AI’s hosted GLM stack now spanning GLM-5.1, GLM-5V-Turbo, and earlier GLM branches for coding, reasoning, and multimodal workflows.

• Freemium
• cloud-llm
• chat-assistant
• multimodal

Best for: Hosted GLM access across text and vision workloads, Cloud coding assistants and technical drafting

GLM-5V-Turbo

Latest GLM vision branch for multimodal coding, screenshot understanding, GUI agents, and visually grounded execution workflows.

• Freemium
• cloud-llm
• multimodal
• vision

Best for: Screenshot-based coding help, GUI and browser agent workflows

InternVL 3.5

Apache-2.0 multimodal family with many size options and a strong focus on reasoning, OCR, and agent-style visual tasks.

• Free
• local-inference
• open-weights
• self-hosted

Best for: Multimodal internal analysis workflows, Builders experimenting with vision-language tasks

Kimi K2.6

Latest open-weight Kimi model for long-horizon coding, agent swarms, multimodal execution, and large-context local experimentation.

• Free
• local-inference
• open-weights
• reasoning

Best for: Local agentic coding workflows, Multimodal local assistant builds

Le Chat

Mistral’s cloud LLM chat with clear plan-level training defaults and opt-out controls.

• Freemium
• cloud-llm
• chat-assistant
• multimodal

Best for: Multilingual drafting and editing, Teams that require explicit training opt-out controls

Llama 3.2 Vision

Vision-capable Llama model for local image-plus-text understanding tasks.

• Free
• local-inference
• open-weights
• self-hosted

Best for: Local image + text analysis workflows, Multimodal document understanding

Llama 4

Open-weight multimodal family with massive context, but significant policy and license constraints.

• Free
• local-inference
• open-weights
• multimodal

Best for: Large multi-document summarization pipelines, Multimodal internal analysis workflows

MiniCPM-V 2.6

Efficient local VLM with strong OCR, multi-image, and video understanding in an 8B-class footprint.

• Free
• local-inference
• open-weights
• self-hosted

Best for: Private visual document analysis, Multimodal local assistant workflows

Mistral Small 4

Open hybrid Mistral model that combines instruct, reasoning, coding, OCR, and transcription in one 256K-context family.

• Free
• local-inference
• open-weights
• self-hosted

Best for: Multimodal local assistant workflows, Multimodal document understanding

Molmo

Open vision-language family from AI2 focused on strong multimodal quality with Apache-2.0 licensing.

• Free
• local-inference
• open-weights
• self-hosted

Best for: Multimodal document understanding, Private visual document analysis

Phi-3.5 Vision Instruct

Compact MIT-licensed multimodal model for local image, OCR, chart, and multi-image reasoning tasks.

• Free
• local-inference
• open-weights
• on-device

Best for: Multimodal document understanding, Private visual document analysis

Qwen Chat

Alibaba’s cloud Qwen assistant with multilingual support and enterprise-grade API access through Model Studio.

• Freemium
• cloud-llm
• chat-assistant
• multimodal

Best for: Multilingual drafting and rewriting, Cost-controlled cloud assistant operations

Qwen2.5 VL

Multimodal Qwen model family for local vision-language workflows.

• Free
• local-inference
• open-weights
• self-hosted

Best for: Multimodal local assistant workflows, Private visual document analysis

Qwen3.5

Native multimodal Qwen family with sparse MoE scaling, strong agent behavior, and a flagship 397B total / 17B active open model.

• Free
• local-inference
• open-weights
• self-hosted

Best for: Multimodal local assistant workflows, Private visual document analysis

Qwen3.6

Qwen3.6 family covering the hosted Qwen3.6-Plus flagship and the first open-weight Qwen3.6-35B-A3B release.

• Free
• cloud-llm
• local-inference
• open-weights

Best for: Teams choosing between hosted and local Qwen generation, Agentic coding workflows

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

First open-weight Qwen3.6 model: a 35B total / 3B active multimodal MoE focused on agentic coding and practical local use.

• Free
• local-inference
• open-weights
• apache-2-0

Best for: Local agentic coding workflows, Multimodal local assistant builds