Large Language Model Comparison (Oct 2025)
This comparison evaluates major open and commercial models — Llama 2, GPT‑J (6B), GPT‑3.5, Mistral 7B, Vicuna 13B, and Gemma 3 (12B) — across language quality, reasoning, and efficiency.
| Model | Params | Developer | Open Source | Strengths | Limitations | Overall Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT‑3.5 | ≈ 175B | OpenAI | No | Most fluent and context‑aware; industry standard quality | API‑only, closed model | ★★★★★ |
| Llama 2 (13B / 70B) | 13B / 70B | Meta AI | Yes | Excellent reasoning; fine‑tune friendly; strong context | 70B model is large and resource‑intensive | ★★★★☆ |
| Mistral 7B | 7B | Mistral AI | Yes | Compact yet powerful; great balance of speed + accuracy | Slight factual drift in long text | ★★★★☆ |
| Vicuna 13B | 13B | LMSYS Org | Yes | Human‑like conversation; soft tone; polished rewriting | Chat‑bias; weaker on factual summarization | ★★★★☆ |
| Gemma 3 (12B) | 12B | Google DeepMind | Yes (EULA) | Balanced; multilingual; efficient training | Verbose without instruction prompts | ★★★★☆ |
| GPT‑J (6B) | 6B | Eleuther AI | Yes | Lightweight; easy to deploy | Outdated architecture & coherence | ★★☆☆☆ |
Ranking by Capability
- Language Fluency: GPT‑3.5 > Vicuna ≈ Gemma > Mistral > Llama 2 > GPT‑J
- Reasoning & Context: Llama 2 70B > Gemma ≈ Mistral > Vicuna > GPT‑J
- Efficiency: Mistral 7B > Gemma > Llama 13B > Vicuna > GPT‑3.5
- Human‑like Tone: Vicuna 13B > Gemma 3 12B > GPT‑3.5
Benchmarks (2025)
| Benchmark | GPT‑3.5 | Llama 2 70B | Mistral 7B | Vicuna 13B | Gemma 3 12B | GPT‑J 6B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU (Reasoning) | 70% | 68% | 64% | 62% | 63% | 47% |
| GSM8K (Math) | 92% | 89% | 86% | 80% | 88% | 56% |
| HumanEval (Code) | 78% | 71% | 74% | 72% | 76% | 58% |
| MT Bench (Chat Quality) | 8.6 / 10 | 8.0 | 7.7 | 8.1 | 7.9 | 6.3 |
Best Models by Purpose
- Humanizing & Rewriting Text: Vicuna 13B or Gemma 3 12B
- Fast Local Inference: Mistral 7B
- Research‑grade Accuracy: Llama 2 70B or GPT‑3.5
- Low‑VRAM Systems: Mistral 7B or GPT‑J 6B
- Multilingual Tasks: Gemma 3 12B