đŸ‘ī¸Updated January 2026

Best Vision & Multimodal
LLMs for Image Understanding

Which AI actually sees best? We rank 46 multimodal models using MMMU Pro (academic visual reasoning) and LM Arena Vision (human preference).

📐

How We Rank Vision Models

Vision Score = MMMU Pro (60%) + LM Arena Vision (40%)

MMMU Pro (60%)
Multi-discipline visual understanding: science diagrams, art analysis, charts, documents. Directly measures what the model "sees."
LM Arena Vision (40%)
Human preference votes on real image-based conversations. Captures practical "which answer is better" quality.

🏆Top 3 Vision Models

Full Vision Model Rankings

RankModelVision ScoreMMMU ProArena VisionText ArenaLicense
1

Gemini 3 Flash (secondary row)

Google

79.079%——Proprietary
2

GPT-5.2 (medium)

OpenAI

75.075%—1443Proprietary
3

Claude Opus 4.5 (high)

Anthropic

74.074%—1470Proprietary
4

GPT-5.1 Codex (high)

OpenAI

73.073%——Proprietary
5

Gemini 3 Pro Preview (high)

Google

72.780%13091490Proprietary
6

Doubao-Seed-1.8

ByteDance Seed

71.071%——Proprietary
7

Claude Opus 4.5 (legacy row)

Anthropic

71.071%——Proprietary
8

Gemini 3 Flash

Google

70.780%12841480Proprietary
9

GPT-5 mini (high)

OpenAI

70.070%——Proprietary
10

Claude 4.5 Sonnet

Anthropic

69.069%—1446Proprietary

📄Best for Documents & PDFs

Need to analyze charts, read documents, or process invoices? These models excel at structured visual content.

đŸ’ŦBest for Image Chat & Description

Building a chatbot that discusses images? LM Arena Vision measures how humans rate image conversations.

Key Insights for January 2026

🔭 State of Vision AI

  • â€ĸ Gemini 3 dominates with 1M token context + strong vision
  • â€ĸ MMMU Pro 80%+ is the current frontier for visual reasoning
  • â€ĸ Gap between proprietary and open source is still large for vision
  • â€ĸ Most "vision" models are actually multimodal (text + image)

đŸŽ¯ How to Choose

  • â€ĸ Document OCR/analysis: Prioritize MMMU Pro score
  • â€ĸ General image chat: LM Arena Vision is your guide
  • â€ĸ Long PDFs: Check context window (1M+ for books)
  • â€ĸ Privacy: Open source options exist but lag behind

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best AI for image understanding in 2026?

Gemini 3 Flash (secondary row) leads with a vision score of 79.0, scoring 79% on MMMU Pro and N/A Elo on LM Arena Vision. It excels at both structured document analysis and conversational image tasks.

Is GPT-5 better than Gemini for vision tasks?

Based on current benchmarks, Gemini 3 Pro has the edge for pure vision tasks, particularly MMMU Pro. However, GPT-5 variants show strong MMMU Pro scores (66%). For combined text+vision reasoning where you need both strong language and image understanding, test both on your specific use case.

What is the best open source vision model?

Among models with published vision benchmarks, Qwen3 VL 235B A22B offers the best self-hostable option with MMMU Pro 69%. However, proprietary models still lead significantly. For budget-conscious vision tasks, consider hybrid approaches: use open source for initial processing and proprietary APIs for complex reasoning.

What benchmarks measure vision model quality?

MMMU Pro (Massive Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding) tests visual reasoning across 30+ subjects including science, engineering, art, and business. LM Arena Vision uses human voting to rank models on real image conversations. We weight MMMU Pro at 60% (measures raw capability) and Arena Vision at 40% (measures practical preference) for our composite score.

🔍

Compare Vision Models Side-by-Side

Use our benchmark comparison tool to see MMMU Pro, Arena Vision, and other scores across all models.

Related Rankings

Data sources: MMMU Pro from mmmu-benchmark.github.io. LM Arena Vision from lmarena.ai. Updated weekly.See methodology →