A Comparative Analysis of Large Language Model Providers: Performance, Scalability, Reliability, and Sustainability
Abstract
Large language model (LLM) provider selection has become a multi-objective infrastructure decision rather than a simple benchmark ranking exercise. This paper compares major proprietary, open-weight, and hyperscaler-mediated LLM options across four dimensions: performance, scalability, reliability, and sustainability. It synthesizes benchmark evidence, systems literature, provider disclosures, outage data, and environmental studies to show three cross-cutting patterns: benchmark leadership is increasingly fragile under contamination-free and real-world evaluation; sparse and optimized serving architectures are compressing the cost gap between frontier and open-weight systems; and reliability and sustainability disclosures lag behind enterprise adoption. The resulting framework emphasizes task-specific evaluation, tiered model routing, explicit fallback design, and per-query resource accounting as prerequisites for responsible production deployment.
Keywords
- Large language models
- LLM providers
- comparative analysis
- inference economics
- model routing
- sustainability
- reliability
Thanks
References
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Details
Primary Language
English
Subjects
Natural Language Processing
Journal Section
Research Article
Early Pub Date
July 13, 2026
Publication Date
August 31, 2026
Submission Date
June 1, 2026
Acceptance Date
July 13, 2026
Published in Issue
Year 2026 Volume: 10 Number: 1