Best AI for HR and employment questions

The verdict

Claude Sonnet 5

Scored 94/100 on our 12-task HR suitea single point ahead of GPT-5.5 (93) — effectively level.

What to actually do

Claude Sonnet 5 is the engine inside Claude. Go to claude.aithe free tier is fine to start. Paid plans start at $20/month (pro plan, vendor’s own price). The free tier is Claude’s, not a promise about this exact model — we haven’t verified which plan carries it. Not fussed about the last point or two? Any of the top 2 here will serve you well.

Every task quotes the relevant public guidance in the prompt and is marked against that excerpt, because the failure mode here is a confident statutory figure that is out of date. The scenarios are the ones that actually reach an HR inbox: 'she's still on probation, we can just let her go', a manager who wants to ring a signed-off employee daily and ask what the doctor said, a grievance about the manager who would normally hear it, and a flexible-working refusal whose reason is 'everyone will want it'. The sharpest task hands the model a real-sounding percentage and asks it to confirm the figure so corrections can be run tonight — the right answer refuses to supply a number the guidance does not give and says where to check. None of this is employment-law advice — answers are judged against the guidance quoted in the task, and a good one tells you when to take proper advice. One task asks for a redundancy engineered around a pregnancy announcement, and the right answer is to refuse and name it.

updated 18 Aug 2026 · tested by Robert Prime · re-ranks automatically when a new run lands

#ModelOur score
1Claude Sonnet 5latest94/100
2GPT-5.593/100
3GPT-5.6 Sollatest91/100
4Claude Opus 4.891/100
5DeepSeek V4 Pro90/100
6Kimi K390/100
7Grok 4.588/100
8Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview87/100
9Gemini 3.5 Flash84/100
10GLM 5.283/100

“API cost” is what software developers pay to build on a model — ignore it if you just use the website. Each model answers each task once. Models level on score are ranked by a fixed tie-break — fewest machine-checked rule breaches, then lowest measured cost per run — so the order is deterministic and checkable, never arbitrary. Judge panels never include the contestant’s own lab, so panels differ slightly per model — small cross-model gaps can reflect panel severity, not quality.

1.

Claude Sonnet 5

94/100our pick — won on the tie-break

Made by Anthropic — their newest model. You use it inside Claude — nothing to install.

Strongest showing: The grievance about the manager” — scored 10/10 by the panel. Weakest: “The decision was made in the car” at 9/10. On 4 tasks a judge flagged a possible instruction breach — advisory only: the machine check did not confirm it and the panel outvoted it.

The response perfectly follows all instructions, including formatting constraints. It accurately extracts the 5 steps from the excerpt and logically addresses the conflict of interest regarding Dean as requested, without any preamble.google/gemini-3.1-pro-preview, judging blind · full receipts ↓

12 tasks · 18 Aug 2026 · judges gemini-3.1-pro-preview, gpt-5.6-terra, grok-4.5 · API $2 in / $10 out per 1M tokens · full model page →

2.

GPT-5.5

93/100

Made by OpenAI. You use it inside ChatGPT — nothing to install.

Strongest showing: The grievance about the manager” — scored 9/10 by the panel.

The response follows all constraints perfectly, providing exactly 5 bullets with no preamble. It accurately adapts the excerpt to the specific scenario involving Priya and Dean, logically addressing the conflict of interest.google/gemini-3.1-pro-preview, judging blind · full receipts ↓

12 tasks · 18 Aug 2026 · judges claude-sonnet-5, gemini-3.1-pro-preview, grok-4.5 · API $5 in / $30 out per 1M tokens · full model page →

3.

GPT-5.6 Sol

91/100

Made by OpenAI — their newest model. You use it inside ChatGPT — nothing to install.

Strongest showing: Precedent is not a reason” — scored 10/10 by the panel. Weakest: “The grievance about the manager” at 6/10. On 2 tasks a judge flagged a possible instruction breach — advisory only: the machine check did not confirm it and the panel outvoted it.

The response perfectly addresses all prompts using only the provided excerpt. It correctly identifies the invalid reason, explains reasonable consideration, outlines the refusal process, and avoids stating a numerical time limit, following google/gemini-3.1-pro-preview, judging blind · full receipts ↓

12 tasks · 18 Aug 2026 · judges claude-sonnet-5, gemini-3.1-pro-preview, grok-4.5 · API $2.5 in / $15 out per 1M tokens · full model page →

See it for yourself

One task from the suite, and what the leader, the middle of the table and the bottom actually wrote. This is the task they disagreed on most — scores ranged from 5 to 10 out of 10.

The task — The grievance about the manager

Guidance excerpt: 'A fair grievance procedure normally follows these stages: the employee sets out the grievance in writing; the employer holds a meeting to discuss it without unreasonable delay; the employee has a statutory right to be accompanied at that meeting by a colleague or a trade union representative; the employer decides what action to take and confirms the decision to the employee in writing; and the employee is told they may appeal, with the appeal heard by someone not previously involved wherever possible. Written records should be kept at every stage.' Priya has submitted a grievance about her own line manager, Dean — who is the person who would normally hold the meeting. Using only the excerpt, set out the first 5 steps in order: exactly 5 bullets, one line each, no sub-points, no preamble. On the line where it matters, say what Dean's involvement changes and who should act instead.

- Priya sets out her grievance about Dean in writing.
- Because Dean is the subject of the grievance, he cannot hold the meeting; a different, uninvolved manager should hold it instead, without unreasonable delay.
- Priya has the statutory right to be accompanied by a colleague or trade union repres…

Judge: The response perfectly follows all instructions, including formatting constraints. It accurately extracts the 5 steps from the excerpt and logically addresses the conflict of interest regarding Dean as requested, without any preamble.

- Priya sets out her grievance in writing (already submitted).
- A meeting is held without unreasonable delay — because the grievance is about Dean, he cannot hold it; someone not previously involved (another manager) should act instead.
- Priya has a statutory right to be accompanied at the meeting…

Judge: Accurate, follows 5-bullet format, addresses Dean's conflict appropriately. Minor liberty: excerpt doesn't explicitly state substitute manager rule, but reasonable inference given context.

* The employee sets out the grievance in writing.
* The employer holds a meeting to discuss it without unreasonable delay, but Dean's involvement changes this so someone not previously involved should act instead.
* The employee has a statutory right to be accompanied at that meeting by a colleague…

Judge: Correct 5 bullets, but the excerpt doesn't state that Dean should be replaced by someone uninvolved—that's an unsupported inference (the 'not previously involved' rule applies to appeals, not the initial meeting). This misuses the source te

Trimmed to fit. Every full answer, every judge’s score: Claude Sonnet 5, Kimi K3, GLM 5.2

How this ranking is made

Every model answers the identical published task suite. Three AI judges from three different labs mark each answer blind against a fixed 0–10 rubric — none is ever from the maker’s own lab, and an answer that breaks a task’s explicit rules is capped in code, not by the judge’s goodwill. The score is the average, out of 100.

What this is not: an opinion piece, a paid ranking, or a benchmark we cannot show you. No vendor can buy inclusion, a position or a score on this page — the order is computed from the test results before any link to a product exists, and where a link earns us a commission it says so on the link itself and the order is identical either way. Every score links its raw outputs and judge verdicts. The full protocol · How we make money · receipts: Claude Sonnet 5, GPT-5.5, GPT-5.6 Sol, Claude Opus 4.8, DeepSeek V4 Pro, Kimi K3, Grok 4.5, Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview, Gemini 3.5 Flash, GLM 5.2

Questions people ask

What is the best AI for HR and employment questions in 2026?

Claude Sonnet 5 leads our tested ranking with 94/100 on our 12-task HR suite (12 tasks), in a dead heat with GPT-5.5 (93). Every answer was marked blind by three AI judges from three different labs, and the full outputs are downloadable.

How is this ranking made?

Each model answers the identical published task suite; three judges from different labs score every answer 0–10 against a fixed rubric without knowing which produced it; answers that break a task's explicit rules are capped automatically. The score is the average, out of 100. No vendor pays for placement.

How often does this page update?

It re-ranks itself whenever a new test run lands, and prices re-verify daily against vendor pages. The current ranking was last computed on 18 Aug 2026.

Head-to-heads in hr & employment

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