Hi all,
Been playing with n8n for a little bit now, I have been looking into what AI models seen to be best at what etc,
What’s everyone using that they find is reliable, cost effective and actually well rounded, looking for all types of AI uses?
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You can view and compare all leading models(for each category and use case) of the industry here.
Hi @b8l2z Welcome!
AI Automation Specialist here. What i have seen by far is that it depends on how you are using your AI agent, if your AI agent has a heavy tool calling (more than 2-3 tools for data) i recommend always using OpenAI’s GPT-4o it has been the best for tool calling by far, and if your role is just to process some data use any model you like but if you want tools always prefer OpenAI models.
people have this wrong Idea about the Autonomous driven flows that AI can do everything, what i would say is the best practice when automating flows and leveraging AI is use a principle called “Try Not To Use AI” like try to do all the data work using n8n’s nodes and only use AI when you need customization and personalized stuff, and this has helped me a lot in production grade flows and this saves costs also in all cases this is the most reliable approach.
And by the way i use this website to compare models , i really do not need to but just in case:
Hey welcome! Honestly for most n8n workflows I would just go with GPT-4o, especially if your agents are doing any tool calling it handles that the best by far. If you want something cheaper for simpler tasks like summarizing or extracting data from text, Gemini is a solid pick and way more cost effective. You can also check out Official n8n AI Benchmark which compares how different models actually perform inside n8n specifically.
Welcome to the community @b8l2z
Given that no single model can do everything better than the rest, the most logical approach in 2026 is to think in workflows and use multiple models.
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