Top Picks for Reasoning
Claude Opus 4.8
Anthropic's flagship consistently performs well on complex, multi-step reasoning benchmarks and careful analytical tasks.
View profile →GPT-5
A strong general reasoning option with broad benchmark performance across categories.
View profile →Gemini 2.5 Pro
Competitive reasoning performance paired with a large context window for reasoning across long documents.
View profile →Grok 4
Strong recent benchmark performance, particularly on extended, long-horizon reasoning tasks.
View profile →What Reasoning Benchmarks Actually Test
"Reasoning" benchmarks typically test multi-step math, logic puzzles, and problems requiring the model to work through intermediate steps rather than pattern-match to a memorized answer. See our AI Benchmarks page for more on how to interpret these scores.
Dedicated Reasoning Modes
Several providers now offer a distinct "thinking" or extended-reasoning mode that trades speed for improved accuracy on complex problems — worth enabling specifically for genuinely hard reasoning tasks, and worth skipping for simple ones where the extra latency isn't worth it.
Related Pages
Frequently Asked
Is a 'reasoning model' different from a regular chat model?
Some models offer a distinct reasoning mode optimized for working through complex problems step by step, which can trade off speed for improved accuracy on hard tasks.
Should I always use reasoning mode when it's available?
No — it's typically slower and sometimes more expensive; reserve it for genuinely complex problems rather than simple, everyday questions.
Which model is best for math specifically?
This shifts frequently with new releases; check our AI Benchmarks page and current model profiles for the latest reported math-specific benchmark performance.
Where can I see current benchmark rankings?
See our Rankings page for current model standings across categories.