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Llama 4 MaverickvsLlama 3.3

Meta vs Meta — Side-by-side model comparison

Llama 4 Maverick leads 3/5 categories

Head-to-Head Comparison

MetricLlama 4 MaverickLlama 3.3
Provider
Meta
Meta
Arena Rank
#7
#13
Context Window
1M
128K
Input Pricing
Free/1M tokens
Free/1M tokens
Output Pricing
Free/1M tokens
Free/1M tokens
Parameters
400B MoE (17B active)
70B
Open Source
Yes
Yes
Best For
Open source, self-hosted, multilingual
General purpose, multilingual, coding
Release Date
Apr 5, 2025
Dec 6, 2024

Llama 4 Maverick

Llama 4 Maverick, developed by Meta AI, is a large Mixture-of-Experts model representing the most capable freely available AI for general-purpose tasks. As Meta's flagship open-source release, Maverick demonstrates strong performance across coding, reasoning, creative writing, and multilingual tasks, competing with proprietary models on standard benchmarks. The MoE architecture activates only a subset of its total parameters per token, enabling frontier-class capability with manageable inference costs. It can be downloaded, modified, fine-tuned, and deployed without API costs or licensing restrictions. The model has become a foundation for thousands of fine-tuned variants across the open-source community, powering applications in healthcare, education, content creation, and enterprise software. Llama 4 Maverick reflects Meta's strategic investment in open-source AI, building developer ecosystem engagement while advancing the accessibility of powerful AI models globally.

Llama 3.3

Llama 3.3 is Meta's most efficient high-performance model, delivering capability comparable to the much larger Llama 3.1 405B while using only 70 billion parameters. This dramatic efficiency gain means organizations can deploy near-frontier AI capabilities on significantly less hardware. The model supports a 128K context window, strong multilingual performance across dozens of languages, and excellent coding and reasoning abilities. As a fully open-source model, it can be self-hosted, fine-tuned for specific domains, and deployed without API costs. Llama 3.3 has become the de facto standard for organizations that need powerful AI but want to maintain control over their infrastructure and data. It's widely available through cloud providers and can run on consumer GPUs.

Key Differences: Llama 4 Maverick vs Llama 3.3

1

Llama 4 Maverick ranks higher in arena benchmarks (#7) indicating stronger overall performance.

2

Llama 4 Maverick supports a larger context window (1M), allowing it to process longer documents in a single request.

3

Llama 4 Maverick has 400B MoE (17B active) parameters vs Llama 3.3's 70B, which affects inference speed and capability.

L

When to use Llama 4 Maverick

  • +You need the highest quality output based on arena rankings
  • +You need to process long documents (1M context)
  • +Your use case involves open source, self-hosted, multilingual
View full Llama 4 Maverick specs →
L

When to use Llama 3.3

  • +Your use case involves general purpose, multilingual, coding
View full Llama 3.3 specs →

Cost Analysis

Both models have similar pricing. For a typical enterprise workload processing 100M tokens per month:

Llama 4 Maverick monthly cost

$0

100M tokens/mo (50/50 in/out)

Llama 3.3 monthly cost

$0

100M tokens/mo (50/50 in/out)

The Verdict

Llama 4 Maverick wins our head-to-head comparison with 3 out of 5 category wins. It's the stronger choice for open source, self-hosted, multilingual, though Llama 3.3 holds an edge in general purpose, multilingual, coding.

Last compared: April 2026 · Data sourced from public benchmarks and official pricing pages

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Llama 4 Maverick or Llama 3.3?
In our head-to-head comparison, Llama 4 Maverick leads in 3 out of 5 categories (arena rank, context window, input pricing, output pricing, and parameters). Llama 4 Maverick excels at open source, self-hosted, multilingual, while Llama 3.3 is better suited for general purpose, multilingual, coding. The best choice depends on your specific requirements, budget, and use case.
How does Llama 4 Maverick pricing compare to Llama 3.3?
Llama 4 Maverick charges Free per 1M input tokens and Free per 1M output tokens. Llama 3.3 charges Free per 1M input tokens and Free per 1M output tokens. For high-volume production workloads, the pricing difference can significantly impact total cost of ownership.
What is the context window difference between Llama 4 Maverick and Llama 3.3?
Llama 4 Maverick supports a 1M token context window, while Llama 3.3 supports 128K tokens. Llama 4 Maverick can process longer documents, codebases, and conversations in a single request. Context window size matters most for tasks involving long documents, large codebases, or extended conversations.
Can I use Llama 4 Maverick or Llama 3.3 for free?
Llama 4 Maverick is available for free (open-source). Llama 3.3 is available for free (open-source). Open-source models can be self-hosted for free but require your own GPU infrastructure.
Which model has better benchmarks, Llama 4 Maverick or Llama 3.3?
Llama 4 Maverick holds arena rank #7, while Llama 3.3 holds rank #13. Llama 4 Maverick performs better in overall arena benchmarks, which aggregate human preference ratings across coding, reasoning, and general tasks. Note that benchmarks don't capture every use case — we recommend testing both models on your specific tasks.
Is Llama 4 Maverick or Llama 3.3 better for coding?
Llama 4 Maverick's primary strength is open source, self-hosted, multilingual. Llama 3.3 is specifically optimized for coding tasks. For coding specifically, arena rank and code-specific benchmarks are the best indicators of performance.