Meta Llama ecosystem
The most-deployed open weights in the West, now in managed decline — Meta's frontier work moved to proprietary Muse, the Llama API is dead, and the license was never open source.
PRICING
| Free | Free | open weights, Llama license |
Meta does not sell Llama as a subscription — model weights are downloaded free under the Llama Community License, which restricts services above 700M monthly active users. Real cost is whatever your host or cloud charges to run them; llama.com's own Llama 4 comparison table cites $0.19-$0.49 per 1M tokens for third-party inference.
checked 2026-07-25 · vendor pricing page
Element scores
Strengths
Free, battle-tested weights with the largest installed base in the West and the deepest community stack: llama.cpp and vLLM for inference, torchtune/Unsloth for fine-tuning, and the strongest open safety tooling anywhere (Llama Guard 4, LlamaFirewall, Prompt Guard 2). Llama 4 Scout's 10M-token context is class-leading and runs on a single H100 quantized. Self-hosting economics remain compelling for existing deployments — nothing gets rug-pulled that you already run.
Honest dings
The vendor has left the building: Meta's frontier development moved to the proprietary Muse line (April 2026), the Llama API shut down on 06/07/2026, and Llama Stack was handed to the community as the model-agnostic OGX. Llama 4 itself underperformed (benchmark-gaming admissions, developer traction below expectations) and Chinese open-weight rivals now outpace it. The license was never open source per the OSI — 700M-MAU gate, naming and attribution duties, a unilaterally updatable Acceptable Use Policy, and (critical for European readers) Llama 4 multimodal rights are explicitly denied to companies with their principal place of business in the EU. No official word on any future Llama release.
Sources (11) — every claim traceable
Every audit lists the research it rests on — transparency and traceability are the product. Tools evolve: each audit is a snapshot of its audit date, and re-audits supersede older versions (kept below for reference).
- llama.developer.meta.com — Official: Llama API public preview retired 06/07/2026; users directed to third-party hosts; weights remain downloadable (accessed 2026-07-08)
- ai.meta.com/blog/Llama-4-multimodal-intelligence — Official Llama 4 announcement: Scout (17B active/109B, 16 experts) and Maverick (17B active/400B, 128 experts), natively multimodal MoE; Behemoth previewed but not released (accessed 2026-07-08)
- llama.meta.com/docs/deployment/versioning — Official deployment docs: Scout 10M-token / Maverick 1M-token context windows, Llama 3.x line specs, versioning and migration guidance (accessed 2026-07-08)
- about.fb.com/news/2026/04/introducing-muse-spark-me… — Official: Muse Spark (08/04/2026) is proprietary, powers Meta AI, private API preview only; 'hope to open-source future versions' — no commitment (accessed 2026-07-08)
- venturebeat.com/technology/goodbye-llama-meta-launc… — Independent: Llama 4 mixed reviews + benchmark-gaming admissions, 1.2B ecosystem downloads, Meta non-answer on future Llama development, Chinese rivals at 41% of HF downloads (accessed 2026-07-08)
- thenewstack.io/meta-abandons-llama-spark — Independent analysis (30/04/2026): Meta has practically abandoned Llama development; migration options for Llama users; Andrew Ng on the loss to the developer community (accessed 2026-07-08)
- llama.com/llama4/license — Llama 4 Community License: 700M-MAU clause requiring Meta permission, Acceptable Use Policy incorporated by reference (accessed 2026-07-08)
- opensource.org/blog/metas-llama-license-is-still-no… — Open Source Initiative: Llama licenses fail the Open Source Definition (freedom 0, OSD 5, OSD 6); Meta's 'open source' branding is open-washing (accessed 2026-07-08)
- compliance-made-simple.ch/llama — Independent compliance analysis: Llama 4 AUP denies multimodal-model rights to EU-domiciled individuals/companies; 'Built with Llama' attribution and 'Llama' naming requirements (accessed 2026-07-08)
- ai.meta.com/blog/llamacon-llama-news — Official LlamaCon (04/2025): Llama Guard 4, LlamaFirewall, Prompt Guard 2, CyberSecEval 4, 1B+ downloads, Llama API preview launch (since retired) (accessed 2026-07-08)
- github.com/meta-llama/llama-stack — Repo now redirects to community-run OGX (ex-Llama Stack): renamed, model-agnostic, MIT — evidence Meta's first-party harness was spun off (accessed 2026-07-08)