Llama

Meta Llama 4 is the currently most ambitious open-source model family and the first major natively multimodal LLM that processes text, image and video in a single architecture. Based on Mixture-of-Experts (MoE), there are three variants: Scout (109B parameters, 16 experts), Maverick (400B) and Behemoth (2T parameters) — from an efficient everyday model to a frontier giant.

The most outstanding feature is the context window of 10 million tokens — roughly 50 times larger than most models. This allows Llama 4 Scout to process entire databases, complete codebases or extensive document collections in a single pass. Additionally, Llama natively supports over 200 languages, making it the most versatile model for international applications.

Llama is available under the Llama Community License, which permits commercial use — as long as the product has fewer than 700 million monthly active users (MAU). For virtually all companies, this is not a restriction. Compared to the MIT license of DeepSeek or Apache 2.0 of Qwen, the Llama license is slightly more restrictive, but offers Meta's extensive ecosystem and support in return.

For companies that want to run multimodal AI applications on their own infrastructure, Llama 4 is the first choice. Self-hosting is possible via Hugging Face, Ollama or directly through Meta's platform. The MoE architecture ensures that despite the enormous total parameter count, only a fraction is active per request — keeping inference costs in check.