Models

Custom Engine

6 min readModel routing

Custom Engine pins one exact model. Taskade stops choosing for you on that surface.

Use it when you are comparing models on the same prompt, or when one model genuinely suits a task. For everything else, a rung ages better.

Where to find it

Open the model menu on an agent, a chat, or an automation step.

  • In the builder chat, the models sit behind Current Model, under a Custom Engine heading.
  • In the agent editor and in automation steps, the same list appears under All Models.

The two menus differ on purpose. An automation step can narrow the list to the models valid for that step, so a step menu can be shorter than the builder menu.

The catalog

Taskade offers 15+ frontier models across every provider in the picker. Speed, intelligence, and cost are relative bands, and they are the same signals the in-app picker shows.

Model Provider Good at Speed Intelligence Cost Availability
Claude Opus 5 Anthropic Maximum reasoning with extended thinking Slow Frontier High Max and Enterprise
Claude Sonnet 5 Anthropic Extended thinking for complex tasks Slow Frontier Medium Every paid plan
Claude Haiku 4.5 Anthropic Fast, efficient everyday work Fast Moderate Medium Every paid plan
GPT-5.6 Sol OpenAI Deepest reasoning for hard problems Slow Frontier High Max and Enterprise
GPT-5.6 Terra OpenAI Fast frontier all-rounder Fast Frontier Medium Business and up
GPT-5.6 Luna OpenAI Fast, economical quick tasks Fast High Low Every paid plan
Grok 4.6 xAI Frontier coding and STEM reasoning Medium Frontier High Max and Enterprise
Grok Build 0.1 xAI Fast agentic app building Fast High Medium Every paid plan
Kimi K3 Moonshot Long-context agentic reasoning Slow Frontier High Max and Enterprise
Kimi K2.6 Moonshot Open-weight generalist Medium High High Every paid plan
Kimi K2.7 Code Moonshot Agentic coding Medium High Medium Every paid plan
Qwen 3.7 Max Alibaba Agent foundation flagship Medium Frontier Medium Every paid plan
Qwen 3.7 Plus Alibaba Cost-effective agentic coding Fast High Medium Every paid plan
MiniMax M3 MiniMax Fast open-source generalist Fast High Medium Every paid plan
GLM 5.2 Z.AI Autonomous coding Slow Frontier Medium Max and Enterprise
Nemotron 3 Super NVIDIA Efficient mixture-of-experts for agents Fast High Medium Every paid plan
DeepSeek V4 Pro DeepSeek Frontier reasoning and coding Fast High Low Every paid plan
DeepSeek V4 Flash DeepSeek Fast, low-cost everyday work Fast Moderate Low Every plan, including Free


This list moves. Treat it as accurate on the date in this page's metadata, not as a contract.

Taskade adds frontier models as they ship, and rotates which ones the picker offers. If you want a model you cannot see, ask us. Enterprise agreements can also open models that are not in the default picker, and you can always run a model on your own provider key.

A Custom Engine pick is stored. Your agent, chat, or automation step keeps the exact model id you chose, which is why a pin ages and a rung does not. Nothing breaks when a model leaves this list. Taskade keeps a retired model on file so your saved pick still reads back correctly, and it runs that turn on TSK-Auto instead.

How cost works

The Cost column is a band, not a price. Three things make a single per-model number misleading:

  • Request size changes the total. Credits scale with the tokens a step carries. The same model therefore costs more on a large request than on a small one. A few models add a further multiplier above a very large input.
  • Rates get re-anchored. Taskade measures real usage after a model launches and adjusts its rate to match.
  • Some rates are promotional. A model running on a provider grant costs less than it will once that grant ends.

The model menu shows the current credits for each option at the moment you pick it. That figure is the one to trust. For how metering works, see Model credits.

Context windows

Taskade does not publish a context-window figure per model.

The number a provider advertises describes the raw model, not the budget your step receives. A running step also carries workspace memory, agent knowledge, attachments, and conversation history. The usable remainder therefore differs by surface and by request, and the provider figure overstates what you can pass in.

If a model is not in your picker

The picker rotates, so a model you used last week can be absent today. Nothing breaks when that happens. Taskade routes the turn through TSK-Auto instead, and the work completes on a current model.

If you need a specific model that is not listed, ask us and we can enable it. Enterprise agreements open models outside the default picker. A provider step runs any model on your own key.

This is also why a rung is the better default. A rung follows the catalog forward, and a pin depends on what the picker offers that day.

Run on your own account

To bill a provider account you control, connect it and add a provider step. Taskade supports OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Groq, and OpenRouter accounts for this. The step runs on your key, and every step around it keeps working normally.

See Multi-model AI access for the setup.

Next steps