Which model should I use?

Find the best open models for your use case or migrate from closed source models like Claude, GPT, and Gemini

Looking for the right open source model? Whether you’re exploring by use case or migrating from closed source models like Claude, GPT, or Gemini, this guide provides recommendations based on Fireworks internal testing, customer deployments, and external benchmarks. We update it regularly as new models emerge.

Medium and small models typically offer faster responses and lower cost, with some tradeoff in capability for more complex tasks.

Choose by Use Case

Category	Use Case	Recommended Models
Code & Development	Code generation, reasoning & agentic tasks	DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Kimi K3, GLM 5.3, MiniMax M3
AI Applications	AI agents with tool use	Kimi K3, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, GLM 5.3, MiniMax M3
	General reasoning & planning	DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Kimi K3, GLM 5.3, GPT-OSS 120B (medium)
	Long context & summarization	DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Kimi K3, Qwen3.7 Plus, GLM 5.3
	Fast extraction, classification & search	DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, MiniMax M3, Kimi K3, Step 3.7 Flash, Qwen3 8B (small)
Vision & Multimodal	Vision & document understanding	DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Qwen3.7 Plus, Step 3.7 Flash, Gemma 4 31B (small)
	Audio & video understanding	Qwen3 Omni 30B A3B Instruct, NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B
Search & Retrieval	Embeddings & reranking	Qwen3 Embedding 8B, Qwen3 Reranker 8B

Looking for a smaller MiniLM, BGE, or nomic style embedder? Those legacy models are not shown in the Model Library but still serve on serverless. See embeddings and reranking for the supported ids.

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Migrating from Closed Models?

If you’re currently using Claude, OpenAI / GPT, or Gemini models, here’s a guide to the best open source alternatives on Fireworks by use case and latency requirements.

Claude Alternatives

Closed Source	Use Case	Latency Budget	Open Source Alternative
Claude Opus 4.8 / Sonnet 4.6	• Agentic use cases • Coding • Research agents	High	• DeepSeek V4.1 Flash • Kimi K3 • GLM 5.3 • MiniMax M3 • Qwen3.7 Plus
Claude Haiku 4.5	• Agentic use cases • Coding • Research agents	Low	• Step 3.7 Flash • DeepSeek V4.1 Flash • MiniMax M3 • Qwen3 8B (small)

OpenAI GPT Alternatives

Closed Source	Use Case	Latency Budget	Open Source Alternative
GPT-5.5 / GPT-5.5 Pro	• Agentic use cases • Research agents	High	• DeepSeek V4.1 Flash • Kimi K3 • GLM 5.3 • MiniMax M3
GPT-5.4 mini & nano	• Chatbots • Intent classification • Search	Low	• Step 3.7 Flash • DeepSeek V4.1 Flash • MiniMax M3 • Qwen3 8B (small)

Google Gemini Alternatives

Closed Source	Use Case	Latency Budget	Open Source Alternative
Gemini 3.1 Pro	• Agentic use cases • Research agents • Multimodal	High	• DeepSeek V4.1 Flash • Kimi K3 • GLM 5.3 • Qwen3.7 Plus • MiniMax M3
Gemini 3.5 Flash & 3.1 Flash-Lite	• Chatbots • Intent classification • Search	Low	• Step 3.7 Flash • DeepSeek V4.1 Flash • MiniMax M3 • Qwen3 8B (small)

Understanding Latency Budget:

• High latency budget: Quality is priority. Best for complex reasoning, multi-step workflows, and research tasks where accuracy matters more than speed.
• Low latency budget: Speed is priority. Best for user-facing applications like chatbots, real-time search, and high-throughput classification.

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You can explore and filter every available model in the Fireworks Model Library.

Last updated: September 2026