Best LLM for Government / FedRAMP
Ranked on FedRAMP / IL authorization, data sovereignty, and reasoning quality. Certification pillar dominates.
Updated April 2026. Top 3 this month: DeepSeek: R1 0528, Qwen: Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15, DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.
How we rank
US government and defense workloads require FedRAMP authorization (Moderate or High) and often IL4/IL5. We rank based on availability of authorized endpoints (Azure OpenAI Gov, AWS Bedrock GovCloud, Google Public Sector), then reasoning quality, then price.
Pillars and weights: FedRAMP (50%) · MMLU (20%) · data sovereignty (15%) · price (15%). Our full methodology is published on the methodology page.
Top ranked models
| Rank | Model | Provider | Input $/1M | Output $/1M | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DeepSeek: R1 0528 | DeepSeek | $0.50 | $2.15 | 163,840 |
| 2 | Qwen: Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 | Qwen | $0.26 | $1.56 | 1,000,000 |
| 3 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 | DeepSeek | $0.32 | $0.89 | 163,840 |
| 4 | Qwen: Qwen3.5 397B A17B | Qwen | $0.39 | $2.34 | 262,144 |
| 5 | Tencent: Hunyuan A13B Instruct | Tencent | $0.14 | $0.57 | 131,072 |
| 6 | MiniMax: MiniMax M2.1 | MiniMax | $0.29 | $0.95 | 196,608 |
| 7 | Arcee AI: Trinity Large Preview | Arcee AI | $0.00 | $0.00 | 131,000 |
| 8 | OpenAI: GPT-4o (2024-11-20) | OpenAI | $2.50 | $10.00 | 128,000 |
| 9 | MiniMax: MiniMax-01 | MiniMax | $0.20 | $1.10 | 1,000,192 |
| 10 | Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Anthropic | $3.00 | $15.00 | 1,000,000 |
Tips for government / fedramp
- Confirm the exact authorization level (Moderate vs High) matches your program's needs.
- Government tenants often trail the public product by 3–6 months.
- Build abstraction layers so you can swap models without code changes as authorizations update.
Frequently asked questions
Which LLMs are FedRAMP authorized?
As of April 2026 our weighted top 3 authorized options are DeepSeek: R1 0528, Qwen: Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15, DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3.
Can I use public OpenAI for FedRAMP workloads?
No. Use Azure OpenAI Gov or a FedRAMP-authorized alternative.
Do IL4 and IL5 matter for my use case?
Only if you handle controlled unclassified or classified data. For FOUO / CUI, Moderate is usually sufficient.
Related tasks
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Data refreshed daily via our snapshot cron. See our public JSON API for programmatic access.