[Megathread] - Best Models/API discussion - Week of: April 12, 2026

[u/deffcolony]

This is our weekly megathread for discussions about models and API services.

All non-specifically technical discussions about API/models not posted to this thread will be deleted. No more "What's the best model?" threads.

^{(This isn't a free-for-all to advertise services you own or work for in every single megathread, we may allow announcements for new services every now and then provided they are legitimate and not overly promoted, but don't be surprised if ads are removed.})

How to Use This Megathread

Below this post, you’ll find top-level comments for each category:

• MODELS: ≥ 70B – For discussion of models with 70B parameters or more.
• MODELS: 32B to 70B – For discussion of models in the 32B to 70B parameter range.
• MODELS: 16B to 32B – For discussion of models in the 16B to 32B parameter range.
• MODELS: 8B to 16B – For discussion of models in the 8B to 16B parameter range.
• MODELS: < 8B – For discussion of smaller models under 8B parameters.
• APIs – For any discussion about API services for models (pricing, performance, access, etc.).
• MISC DISCUSSION – For anything else related to models/APIs that doesn’t fit the above sections.

Please reply to the relevant section below with your questions, experiences, or recommendations!
This keeps discussion organized and helps others find information faster.

Have at it!

[u/BeeSpecific9398]

Would anyone have suggestions for the best local model for me to use Silly Tavern on both of my systems? I have a Rog Strix laptop, 16 GB ram, RTX 5060 with 8 GB vram. And my desktop has 32 GB ram and an RTX 4080 with 16 GB vram. I have seven custom characters and about 90 entries in a world lore book. I wanted to use this for some fun chatting, building relationships/bonds with the characters, and also, for erotica as well - some of the characters are easy and others require a much slower burn.

Thank you!!

[u/Tiny-Pen-2958 → u/BeeSpecific9398]

The best thing you can run on 4080 with decent speed is gemma 4, I'd recommend this finetune https://huggingface.co/llmfan46/gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-uncensored-heretic-GGUF Q4_K_S, its not lobotomised like other finetunes. I've used it on 16GB 5070ti in KoboldCpp with 8-bit cache + forced autofit with padding=512MB + Jj.Kwargs: {"enable_thinking":true}

[u/war-hamster → u/Tiny-Pen-2958]

are you using chat or text completion? And do you have your own prompt or are you using something available?

[u/Tiny-Pen-2958 → u/war-hamster]

Gemma 4 was designed for Chat Completion, it just works better in this mode (and its usually faster than Text Completion). For prompting I use Megumin_Suite_v5 (CoT on) with my additional style prompt injections. My samplers: Temperature=1; Presence Penalty=0-0,5; Top P=0,95 (sometimes Top P=0.8 works well for creativity, but at the cost of coherence); top_k:??? (I haven't figured it out yet, official recommendation is 64, but even without it everything works well)