The best open LLMs you can use commercially

Open LLMs whose license clearly permits commercial use — the Apache-2.0, MIT, and other truly-permissive weights you can ship in a product without legal worry. Ranked by popularity within that license-clean set, with the honest cost to run each. The license filter is a hard fact; quality is yours to judge.

How this is ranked: 100% objective: commercialUse is a catalog field set only when the license clearly permits it (we exclude research-only/non-commercial weights like Mistral Research, CC-BY-NC). 'Best' = 'safe to use commercially.' We sort by recognition and tell users to verify the exact license for their use.

1. Llama 3.1 8B Instruct — Meta, 8B · ~8.0 GB VRAM · $0.03/1M API · commercial OK
2. Qwen2.5 7B Instruct — Alibaba, 7B · ~7.0 GB VRAM · $0.07/1M API · commercial OK
3. Llama 3.1 70B Instruct — Meta, 70B · ~53 GB VRAM · $0.40/1M API · commercial OK
4. Qwen2.5-Coder 32B Instruct — Alibaba, 32B · ~25 GB VRAM · $0.83/1M API · commercial OK
5. DeepSeek-R1 — DeepSeek, 671B · ~453 GB VRAM · $1.60/1M API · commercial OK
6. DeepSeek-V3 — DeepSeek, 671B · ~453 GB VRAM · $0.50/1M API · commercial OK
7. Llama 3.3 70B Instruct — Meta, 70B · ~53 GB VRAM · $0.66/1M API est. · commercial OK
8. Llama 3.1 405B Instruct — Meta, 405B · ~290 GB VRAM · $0.80/1M API · commercial OK
9. Kimi K2 Instruct — Moonshot AI, 1043B · ~703 GB VRAM · $8.44/1M API est. · commercial OK
10. Qwen3 0.6B — Qwen, 800M · ~3.0 GB VRAM · $0.11/1M API est. · commercial OK
11. Mistral 7B Instruct v0.3 — Mistral AI, 7.2B · ~8.0 GB VRAM · $0.20/1M API · commercial OK
12. gpt-oss-120b — OpenAI, 117B · ~80 GB VRAM · $0.11/1M API · commercial OK
13. Qwen3-235B-A22B — Alibaba, 235B · ~160 GB VRAM · $1.14/1M API · commercial OK
14. Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct — Alibaba, 7B · ~7.0 GB VRAM · $0.16/1M API est. · commercial OK
15. gpt-oss-20b — OpenAI, 21B · ~15 GB VRAM · $0.09/1M API · commercial OK
16. Qwen3 4B — Qwen, 4B · ~5.0 GB VRAM · $0.13/1M API est. · commercial OK
17. DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B — DeepSeek, 32.5B · ~27 GB VRAM · $0.36/1M API est. · commercial OK
18. Gemma 2 9B Instruct — Google, 9B · ~9.0 GB VRAM · $0.06/1M API · commercial OK
19. Llama 3.2 3B Instruct — Meta, 3B · ~5.0 GB VRAM · $0.12/1M API est. · commercial OK
20. Qwen3-32B — Alibaba, 32.8B · ~25 GB VRAM · $0.36/1M API est. · commercial OK
21. Qwen2.5 1.5B Instruct — Qwen, 1.5B · ~3.0 GB VRAM · $0.11/1M API est. · commercial OK
22. Gemma 3 27B — Google, 27B · ~30 GB VRAM · $0.32/1M API est. · commercial OK
23. gemma 3 270m — google, 300M · ~2.0 GB VRAM · $0.10/1M API est. · commercial OK
24. DeepSeek R1 0528 — deepseek-ai, 684.5B · ~489 GB VRAM · $1.33/1M API · commercial OK
25. Mixtral 8x7B Instruct — Mistral AI, 46.7B · ~34 GB VRAM · $0.24/1M API · commercial OK
26. Qwen2.5 72B Instruct — Alibaba, 72B · ~54 GB VRAM · $0.68/1M API est. · commercial OK
27. Phi-4 — Microsoft, 14B · ~13 GB VRAM · $0.21/1M API est. · commercial OK
28. Llama 4 Maverick (17B-128E) — Meta, 402B · ~274 GB VRAM · $0.38/1M API · commercial OK
29. Qwen3-8B — Alibaba, 8.2B · ~9.0 GB VRAM · $0.17/1M API est. · commercial OK
30. Gemma 3 12B — Google, 12B · ~13 GB VRAM · $0.20/1M API est. · commercial OK
31. Qwen3 1.7B — Qwen, 2B · ~5.0 GB VRAM · $0.12/1M API est. · commercial OK
32. Gemma 2 27B Instruct — Google, 27B · ~22 GB VRAM · $0.65/1M API · commercial OK
33. BGE-M3 — BAAI, 567M · ~3.0 GB VRAM · $0.10/1M API est. · commercial OK
34. Llama 4 Scout (17B-16E) — Meta, 109B · ~77 GB VRAM · $0.20/1M API · commercial OK
35. Mistral Small 3 (24B, 2501) — Mistral AI, 23.6B · ~20 GB VRAM · $0.29/1M API est. · commercial OK
36. Qwen3 4B Instruct 2507 — Qwen, 4B · ~5.0 GB VRAM · $0.13/1M API est. · commercial OK
37. dolphin 2.9.1 yi 1.5 34b — dphn, 34.4B · ~26 GB VRAM · $0.38/1M API est. · commercial OK
38. Qwen2.5 0.5B Instruct — Qwen, 500M · ~2.0 GB VRAM · $0.10/1M API est. · commercial OK
39. DeepSeek V4 Pro — deepseek-ai, 861.6B · ~580 GB VRAM · $0.66/1M API · commercial OK
40. Qwen2.5 Coder 14B Instruct — Qwen, 14.8B · ~14 GB VRAM · $0.22/1M API est. · commercial OK

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