Text / LLM AI models

There is no single best local LLM: the right open model depends on the job and on your memory. Using this week's text model rankings, this guide picks one model per use case (everyday chat, coding, coding agents, reasoning, reading images, long documents, translation, creative writing, laptops, searching your own files and voice), with the memory each one needs, one alternative, and the commands to run them. It also explains why the #1 ranked open models need a server, and which of their smaller siblings fit at home.

Civitai is still where most LoRAs are born, and it is also a single company that has removed whole categories of models, changed its payment rules and gone dark for days under pressure from payment processors. If your workflow depends on a file only Civitai hosts, you have a problem waiting to happen. Captain's map of everywhere else the open-weight world keeps its models in 2026: Hugging Face, the model-page mirrors, torrents and The Hugging Bay, AI Horde, community archives, the creators' own channels, and how to use this site to find the same model in several places at once. Plus how to keep a local archive so no takedown ever stops your work.