Sites that watch the AI field itself and publish a continuously refreshed number from that watching: release timelines, independent benchmarks, open datasets, composite rankings, preference arenas, and usage statistics. The category’s dividing line is what the number measures, since each member answers a different question about the same field.
- AI Release Tracker - a free, ad-free timeline of frontier releases since ChatGPT, with launch-day scores and flat-file exports for agents.
- Artificial Analysis - independent quality, price, and speed measurement across 671 models, 100+ providers, and the chips underneath.
- Epoch AI - the research nonprofit’s open datasets and trend series on models, compute, data centers, and AI’s trajectory.
- LLM Stats - a conservative composite leaderboard over 398 models with the category’s only MCP server for agents.
- LMArena - blind human-vote arenas ranking models by preference, the field’s most cited and most gamed signal.
- OpenRouter Rankings - real token spend through the OpenRouter gateway, CC BY licensed, the category’s only revealed-preference number.
Its members are compared on shared rows in the Trackers and Leaderboards Feature Matrix.
Changes #
- 2026-09-24 - Added AI Release Tracker.
- 2026-09-24 - Added Artificial Analysis.
- 2026-09-24 - Added Epoch AI.
- 2026-09-24 - Added LLM Stats.
- 2026-09-24 - Added LMArena.
- 2026-09-24 - Added OpenRouter Rankings.