Best AI for vibe coding
Scored 100/100 on our 12-task vibe-coding suite — ahead of GPT-5.3-Codex (98) and GPT-5.6 Luna (97).
Claude Opus 4.8 is the engine inside Claude. Go to claude.ai ↗ — the 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 1 here will serve you well.
Vibe coding is describing what you want in plain English and letting the AI write the whole thing — no programming knowledge assumed. The suite asks for complete single-file apps (a timer, an expense splitter, a memory game) judged on whether the logic actually works, plus a bug-fix, a task about knowing what a single HTML file genuinely cannot do, and one request for a password-harvesting quiz — the right answer is to refuse.
updated 16 Aug 2026 · tested by Robert Prime · re-ranks automatically when a new run lands
- All 18 sat the identical 12-task suite — same tasks, same order, one attempt each.
- Every answer marked blind: judges are not told which entrant wrote it.
- Three judges per answer, each from a competing lab. A panel never includes the entrant's own lab.
- Scored 0–10 against a fixed rubric. Answers breaking a task's explicit rules are capped by machine, not by opinion.
- Ties broken by fewest rule breaches, then lowest measured cost — published, not editorial.
- Nobody pays for placement. Last computed 16 Aug 2026.
Every score below links to the raw file behind it: every task, the entrant’s real answer, and all three judges’ marks.
| # | Model | Our score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Claude Opus 4.8 | 100/100 |
| 2 | GPT-5.3-Codex | 98/100 |
| 3 | GPT-5.6 Lunalatest | 97/100 |
| 4 | GPT-5.6 Sol | 97/100 |
| 5 | GPT-5.5 | 96/100 |
| 6 | GPT-5.6 Terra | 95/100 |
| 7 | Grok 4.5 | 90/100 |
| 8 | Qwen3.7 Max | 89/100 |
| 9 | Kimi K3 | 86/100 |
| 10 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | 85/100 |
| 11 | DeepSeek V4 Flash | 82/100 |
| 12 | Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | 81/100 |
| 13 | GLM 5.2 | 81/100 |
| 14 | Claude Opus 4.6 | 80/100 |
| 15 | Mistral Medium 3.5 | 77/100 |
| 16 | Claude Sonnet 5 | 76/100 |
| 17 | Gemini 3.5 Flash | 68/100 |
| 18 | DeepSeek V4 Pro | 63/100 |
Claude Fable 5 refused to attempt this suite, so it has no score to rank. Its provider returned a refusal rather than an answer — model refused (finish_reason=content_filter, native_finish_reason=refusal) — on 27 August 2026. This is the model’s own answer, not a test we skipped.
“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.
Made by Anthropic. You use it inside Claude — nothing to install.
Strongest showing: “Unit converter” — scored 10/10 by the panel. 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 follows all instructions, including the negative constraint to return ONLY the HTML. The conversions work in both directions as you type, handle invalid input gracefully, and format to 2 decimal places.”— google/gemini-3.1-pro-preview, judging blind · full receipts ↓
12 tasks · 16 Aug 2026 · judges gemini-3.1-pro-preview, gpt-5.6-terra, grok-4.5 · API $5 in / $25 out per 1M tokens · full model page →
Made by OpenAI. You use it inside ChatGPT — nothing to install.
Strongest showing: “Unit converter” — scored 10/10 by the panel.
“The response perfectly follows all instructions, including the constraint to return ONLY the HTML. The conversions are accurate, bidirectional, formatted to 2 decimal places, and handle invalid inputs gracefully.”— google/gemini-3.1-pro-preview, judging blind · full receipts ↓
12 tasks · 16 Aug 2026 · judges claude-sonnet-5, gemini-3.1-pro-preview, grok-4.5 · API $1.75 in / $14 out per 1M tokens · full model page →
Made by OpenAI — their newest model. You use it inside ChatGPT — nothing to install.
Strongest showing: “Unit converter” — scored 10/10 by the panel.
“The response perfectly meets all requirements, providing a clean, functional, single-file HTML converter with real-time updates, 2 decimal place formatting, and gentle error handling.”— google/gemini-3.1-pro-preview, judging blind · full receipts ↓
12 tasks · 16 Aug 2026 · judges claude-sonnet-5, gemini-3.1-pro-preview, grok-4.5 · API $0.2 in / $1.2 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 0 to 10 out of 10.
Build a complete single-file HTML page (inline CSS and JS, no external libraries) that is a kitchen countdown timer: the user types minutes, presses Start, sees the time counting down in large digits, and the page title updates with the remaining time. It must include a working Pause and Reset. Return ONLY the HTML file content.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<title>Kitchen Timer</title>
<style>
* { box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0; padding: 0; }
body {
font-family: 'Segoe UI', system-ui, sans-serif;
backgroun…Judge: The response perfectly meets all requirements, providing a fully functional, well-styled single-file HTML timer with all requested features, and returns only the HTML code.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<title>Kitchen Timer</title>
<style>
body { font-family: sans-serif; display: flex; flex-direction: column; align-items: center; justify-conte…Judge: Complete single-file HTML with inline CSS/JS, working start/pause/reset, title updates. No external libs. Minor: no top-level 'Return ONLY HTML' issue since output is pure HTML. Solid, functional, concise.
```html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<title>Kitchen Timer</title>
<style>
:root {
--bg: #f5f0e8;
--card-bg: #ffffff;
--display-bg: #1e1…Judge: The response is truncated, resulting in a critical JavaScript syntax error that renders the timer completely non-functional. It also includes markdown formatting, violating the 'ONLY HTML' constraint.
Trimmed to fit. Every full answer, every judge’s score: Claude Opus 4.8, Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite, DeepSeek V4 Pro
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 Opus 4.8, GPT-5.3-Codex, GPT-5.6 Luna, GPT-5.6 Sol, GPT-5.5, GPT-5.6 Terra, Grok 4.5, Qwen3.7 Max, Kimi K3, Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview, GLM 5.2, Claude Opus 4.6, Mistral Medium 3.5, Claude Sonnet 5, Gemini 3.5 Flash, DeepSeek V4 Pro
Questions people ask
What is the best AI for vibe coding in 2026?
Claude Opus 4.8 leads our tested ranking with 100/100 on our 12-task vibe-coding suite, ahead of GPT-5.3-Codex on 98. 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.
What happens when two models score the same?
They are separated by a fixed, published tie-break rather than by editorial choice: first the fewest machine-checked rule breaches, then the lowest measured cost per run. The order is therefore reproducible from the same data, and where the tie-break decides the top place the page says so.
Did any model refuse to take this test?
Yes — Claude Fable 5 declined this suite outright, returning a refusal rather than an answer, so it has no score to rank. That is the model's own answer and not a test we skipped; the provider's refusal reason and the date are printed on the page.
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 16 Aug 2026.
Head-to-heads in vibe coding
Show all 20 tested pairs ▾
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