Which LLM API Best Serves Production AI Agents? Data Shows Surprising Answers

While OpenAI dominates mindshare, production-grade AI agents require API designs built for reliability, not breadth. Anthropic's agent-first architecture (8.4) and Google's execution strength (8.3) both outperform OpenAI (6.3) on factors that matter to agents: structured error recovery, rate-limit resilience, and authentication simplicity. This benchmark reveals why API design, not model quality alone, determines agent system success.