Top 10 Open Source Large Language Models

The rapid expansion of open-source large language models (LLMs) in the early 2020s has been pivotal in democratizing access to advanced AI technology, allowing businesses and developers to customize and control their models without being tethered to proprietary APIs. This comprehensive guide explores ten influential open-source LLMs as of 2025, highlighting their architectures, strengths, and limitations, while offering insights into their deployment and integration with platforms like Clarifai. These models, including Meta's LLaMA series and Google's Gemma 2, offer diverse capabilities such as multilingual support, multimodal processing, and efficient inference across various hardware, catering to industries with specific needs such as healthcare, finance, and government. Despite their benefits, open-source LLMs demand significant expertise and resources to address challenges like safety alignment and efficient deployment. The guide emphasizes the ongoing evolution of the open-source ecosystem, showcasing how innovations like Mixture-of-Experts architectures and long-context window models are setting the stage for the next generation of AI applications.