Protein Language Models in 2026: Two Ledgers, Eighteen Models, One Honest Recommendation
ESM3 generated a fluorescent protein 58% identical to the nearest natural one, which the authors framed as 500 million years of evolution skipped. That headline is real. So is the fact that for most downstream tasks a well-tuned ESM-2 650M still wins on cost per useful prediction. This survey keeps two ledgers.