Best LLM for Bolt.new
Bolt.new generates entire full-stack apps from a prompt and iterates in the browser, so it leans hard on a model's ability to produce coherent, runnable multi-file code — a place where the strongest coding models pull ahead.
Models Bolt.new supports
Bolt.new is a browser-based AI app builder that scaffolds and runs full-stack projects; it leans on frontier coding models (Claude and GPT families) to generate and iterate on whole codebases.
Best value pick
Hunyuan Hy3
Tencent · Coding Arena 1518 · about $70.00/month at 100,000 calls. The top-ranked Kimi K3 costs $1,200.00/month — you save $1,130.00/month with Hunyuan Hy3.
| 1 | Hunyuan Hy3 | 1518 | $70.00 | Tencent |
| 2 | Muse Spark 1.1 | 1537 | $400.00 | Meta |
| 3 | GLM-5.2 | 1587 | $430.00 | Z.ai (Zhipu AI) |
| 4 | GLM-5.1 | 1518 | $430.00 | Z.ai (Zhipu AI) |
| 5 | Grok 4.5 | 1550 | $600.00 | xAI |
| 6 | Gemini 3.6 Flash | 1527 | $600.00 | |
| 7 | Qwen3.7 Max | 1517 | $750.00 | Alibaba |
| 8 | Claude Sonnet 5 | 1545 | $800.00 | Anthropic |
| 9 | Claude Sonnet 5 (Global)Est. | 1545 | $800.00 | AWS Bedrock |
| 10 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | 1523 | $1,200.00 | Anthropic |
| 11 | Kimi K3 | 1679 | $1,200.00 | Moonshot AI |
| 12 | AU Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.6Est. | 1523 | $1,320.00 | AWS Bedrock |
Intelligence scores are community Arena ratings from LMArena / arena.ai, used under CC BY 4.0. Snapshot last refreshed 28 July 2026. Scores are a relative signal, not an absolute measure of capability. A Measured score was voted on directly; an Estimated score is inherited from an identical base model (a regional/creator-prefixed hosting duplicate). See our methodology.
Why picking isn’t obvious
Whole-app generation is one of the more demanding coding tasks: the model has to keep many files consistent, so a top coding-Arena model reduces broken builds and re-prompts. But token usage is heavy, so value still matters. We rank the coding-capable models by Arena score and cost to show where quality justifies the spend.
FAQ
What is the best value LLM for bolt?
Hunyuan Hy3 is the cheapest model that still clears our quality bar for this task, at about $70.00/month for 100,000 calls (1,500 in / 500 out). It scores 1518 on the Coding Arena.
Is the most expensive model worth it for this?
Kimi K3 tops the Coding Arena but costs about $1,200.00/month here — roughly $1,130.00/month more than Hunyuan Hy3 for 161 extra Arena points. For most workloads that gap is not worth the premium.
Why do stronger models help more with Bolt.new?
Generating a whole app in one shot stresses multi-file consistency and instruction following, so a higher coding-Arena model produces runnable output more often — fewer wasted regenerations, which also saves tokens on a heavy workload.
Is a cheaper model ever the right call for Bolt-style building?
For small tweaks and simple scaffolds, yes — a mid-tier coding model handles them fine and costs less. Reserve the flagship for large, from-scratch generations where consistency matters most.
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https://aicalculatorpro.com/best-llm-for/bolt/<a href="https://aicalculatorpro.com/best-llm-for/bolt/">Best LLM for Bolt.new — AI Calculator Pro</a>