# Best AI Models 2026 — Full Test Data (August 2026)

The response data behind [Best AI Models 2026, Ranked](https://hello.tuskcentral.ai/p/best-ai-models-2026-ranked-we-ran-50-prompts-through-all-of-them) and its [full citation audit](https://hello.tuskcentral.ai/p/best-ai-models-2026-full-citation-audit).

50 prompts, 12 models, 2 runs each: 1,200 responses, collected August 2026 through Tusk Central AI.

## What's here

### `transcripts/`
All 1,200 model responses, one file per response, named `{prompt}__{model}__run{n}.md`. Each contains the exact prompt sent and the model's full reply.

Prompt IDs: **W1-W10** writing · **R1-R10** research · **RE1-RE10** reasoning · **E1-E10** everyday work · **S1-S10** quick answers.

### The test
- `prompts.md` — all 50 prompts, verbatim
- `answer-key.md` — ground truth for the objectively gradable prompts, plus the rubric anchors and hard constraints used to score the subjective ones
- `models-manifest.csv` — the 12 models tested, with lab and Tusk tier (Free, Unlimited or Uses Credits)

### `data/`
- `results.csv` — one row per response: model, prompt, run, latency, generation time, token counts (including hidden reasoning tokens), cost in Tusk credits, and finish reason
- `objective-scores.csv` — auto-graded results for the prompts with verifiable answers
- `judge-scores.csv` — all three AI judges' scores, per response, per axis
- `FINAL-RESULTS-HUMAN.md` — the leaderboards as published, after human adjudication

## How to use this

Every row in `results.csv` carries a `transcript_path` pointing at the exact response file, so you can trace any number in the published article back to the raw output that produced it.

**Cost** is reported in Tusk credits per response, the same unit used in the article.

**Speed** is `generation_time_ms`, measured server-side rather than as round-trip time, so network conditions do not distort it. `reasoning_tokens` counts hidden reasoning, which is why some models look slow and expensive relative to the visible length of their answers.

**`billing`** marks whether a model is Free, Unlimited on Tusk or Uses Credits.

## Not included

Raw human-reviewer scoring sheets and the blinding key. Those are one editor's unedited working notes, written for internal use rather than publication. Their scores are reflected in `FINAL-RESULTS-HUMAN.md`.

Cached copies of third-party web pages fetched during the citation audit. That is other publishers' content and not ours to redistribute.

The citation audit write-ups themselves are published in full on the web, not duplicated here: see the [full citation audit](https://hello.tuskcentral.ai/p/best-ai-models-2026-full-citation-audit).

## Known limitations

These are stated in the audit too, but they belong with the data:

- The citation support check used a single judge, not the three used for response scoring. Per-model rates are indicative.
- The 8.6% unsupported figure is a ceiling. Content behind JavaScript or inside PDFs can still read as unsupported to an automated checker.
- Of the 52 unsupported verdicts that count, 44 were re-judged with the corrected method and 8 still rest on the older one (no more than two for any single model).
- One human editor adjudicated the contested responses, not two. There is no inter-rater reliability figure.
- Gemini 3.6 Flash has too few judged citations (16) to support a per-model citation rate.
- 20 of the 1,220 rows in `results.csv` are logged failures that were retried successfully; take the successful row for any given prompt, model and run.

## Corrections

Found something wrong? That is the point of publishing this. Corrections policy: https://hello.tuskcentral.ai/p/how-we-test

Tested August 2026. Re-test scheduled November 2026.
