Open-source LLMs stopped being the budget option in 2026. Kimi K3 sits level with Claude Opus 4.8 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (its hosted API is live; the weights themselves are expected by July 27), GLM-5.2 held the top open-model spot before it, and the field behind them is deep enough that the hard part is choosing. This ranking covers the nine best open-weight models right now — on license, context window, hardware reality, and the per-token price you actually pay. Every...