The Index
One number, per model, per week, from 0 to 100. This is the page that makes the betting fair: the formula is public, every input is dated and sourced, and a failed source shows up as a gap instead of a silent “no change.”
The formula
Index = 50% Quality + 25% Value + 15% Momentum + 10% Adoption, each component normalized to 0–100 before the weights are applied.
| Component | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Quality — 50% | How well the model does on the standard tests — the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, blended with LMArena Elo (the crowd-sourced head-to-head vote). |
| Value — 25% | How much you get per dollar. A cheap model that is nearly as good scores high. This is the sleeper lane. |
| Momentum — 15% | Week-over-week movement in the composite. A model that is climbing gets a boost; one that is fading gets docked. |
| Adoption — 10% | Download and usage growth, from the Hugging Face API (open models) or vendor announcements (frontier). Capped, so hype cannot dominate. |
Where the inputs come from
- Quality: the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index where published, blended with LMArena Elo (the crowd-sourced head-to-head vote) for the feel component.
- Value: the Index score divided into the published API price per million tokens (frontier) or the self-hosting cost class (open). Vendor pricing pages are the source.
- Momentum: this week's composite minus last week's, from the site's own archive — the week files are append-only.
- Adoption: the Hugging Face API for download growth on open models; vendor announcements and API-usage reporting for frontier. Capped so hype cannot dominate.
- News events (the +15/−20 modifiers): vendor news blogs, Hacker News, and r/LocalLLaMA, deduplicated by underlying event and required to cite a primary source.
The data policy
- Full auto-collection, last-known fallback. Every tick pulls every source. A source that fails does not become “no news”: the table shows a coverage gap with the last known value and its date, labeled as stale.
- Nothing is invented. A figure without a source and a date is not a figure; it is not rendered. Preseason means no scores at all — until the baseline is set, the standings are empty by design.
- Everything is dated and cited. Each week file records, per input: the value, the source URL, and the fetch status. The weekly review names any coverage gaps in plain words.
Reference points, so the raw inputs are not abstract: the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index on 5 Nov 2026 had the top open-weight models at DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (33), GLM-5.3 (32) and MiMo-V2.6-Pro (30), per the hokai.io roundup of 5 Nov 2026; the overall index on 8 Nov 2026 had Gemini 4 Carbon at 60, per YLEM's tracker. These are dated snapshots of the raw inputs — not ModelLeague scores, which start at the Season 1 baseline.
Why this shape makes a good game
- The value component creates the sleeper lane. A cheap model that is close to the flagships scores well and is the reason nobody has to draft the same three names.
- Momentum makes weeks matter. A lab's big release week moves several models at once, so a “quiet” week and a release week feel different on the scoreboard.
- News is a score, not a newsletter. The event modifiers are why the league and the news are the same activity: you follow the models because the follow is the game.