{"id":"multimodal","slug":"multimodal","name":"Multimodal understanding (vision+)","shortName":"Multimodal understanding (vision+)","problemStatement":"Agents must reason over images/video/audio inputs at scale.","whenNotTopPick":"Text-only coding agents — Anthropic; or OpenAI Realtime voice stacks.","categoryIds":["cat-inference-apis","cat-media-gen"],"depotPickProviderId":"google-ai","depotPickRationale":"capability multimodal + pricePerf. Gemini often wins value; OpenAI strong ecosystem.","runnersUpIds":["openai","anthropic","minimax","dashscope","zai"],"weights":{"capabilityFit":0.25,"pricePerformance":0.18,"latencyReliability":0.15,"developerDx":0.15,"privacyPosture":0.1,"lockInRisk":0.07,"maturity":0.1},"methodologyNotes":"capability multimodal + pricePerf. Gemini often wins value; OpenAI strong ecosystem.","tags":["multimodal"],"depth":{"whenNotToUse":{"text":"Text-only coding agents — Anthropic; or OpenAI Realtime voice stacks.","source":"editorial `whenNotTopPick` (data/jtbds.json)"},"whenNotToUseReason":null,"runnerUp":{"providerId":"openai","name":"OpenAI","overallForJob":8.22,"pickOverallForJob":8.43,"beatsPickOn":["capabilityFit","latencyReliability","developerDx","maturity"],"source":"first resolvable entry of the job's editorially ranked `runnersUpIds`; scores are stored job-weighted scores"},"runnerUpReason":null,"lockIn":{"pickLockInRisk":6,"runnerUpLockInRisk":7.2,"scale":"0–10 stored curated estimate; higher = more lock-in (worse)","pickExitSignals":[],"runnerUpExitSignals":[],"pickNotes":[],"selfHostFallback":[{"id":"qwen2-5-vl-7b-instruct","name":"Qwen2.5-VL-7B-Instruct","license":"Apache-2.0","sourceUrl":"https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen2.5-VL-7B-Instruct/raw/main/README.md"},{"id":"florence-2-base","name":"Florence-2-base","license":"MIT","sourceUrl":"https://huggingface.co/microsoft/Florence-2-base/raw/main/LICENSE"},{"id":"visualwebarena","name":"VisualWebArena","license":"MIT","sourceUrl":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/web-arena-x/visualwebarena/main/LICENSE"}],"migration":"The pick has lower stored lock-in risk than runner-up OpenAI (6 vs 7.2). Self-host fallback listed for this job: Qwen2.5-VL-7B-Instruct, Florence-2-base, VisualWebArena.","migrationReason":null,"derivedFrom":"stored lockInRisk scores, provider tags (oss, self-host, openai-compat, open-models), free rows that list this job, and verbatim provider notes. No migration guide was invented."}},"freshness":{"pick":{"score":{"asOf":"2026-10-19","ageDays":8,"stale":false,"staleAfterDays":30,"reason":null},"lastReviewed":{"asOf":"2026-10-19","ageDays":8,"stale":false,"staleAfterDays":30,"reason":null},"sourceCheck":{"checkedAt":"2026-10-27","sourceUrls":2,"sourcesReachable":2,"pricingRows":19,"pricingRowsReconfirmed":3,"note":"A source re-check confirms the page is reachable and, for pricing rows, that the stored amount and SKU name appear on it. It does not re-derive or change the score.","reason":null}}}}