Llama 4 Maverick vs Llama 4 Scout

Two Llama 4 models, one generation

Llama 4 Maverick and Llama 4 Scout were released together by Meta on April 5, 2025. They share a lot: both are mixture-of-experts models with 17 billion active parameters, both read text and images natively, both officially support 12 languages, and both have training data up to August 2024. They differ in total size, number of experts, context length, hardware needs and price. Both are in our chat, so you can try them side by side.

Maverick vs Scout at a glance

Prices are OpenRouter list price, Oct 2026.

What the size difference means

A mixture-of-experts model splits its knowledge across many expert sub-networks and uses only a few of them for each token. Both models use 17 billion parameters per token, so they answer at a similar speed. But Maverick has far more experts and nearly four times the total parameters, which gives it more room for knowledge and nuance. In everyday use that usually shows up as richer, more careful answers, especially on open-ended writing, explanations and questions about images. That is why Maverick is the default in our chat.

Scout is the lighter of the two. Meta designed it to fit on a single H100 GPU with Int4 quantization, which makes it the more practical Llama 4 model to run yourself and the cheaper one to call through an API.

Context length: the headline and the reality

Scout's best-known feature is its context window. Meta's model card lists 10 million tokens for Scout, ten times Maverick's 1 million. In practice, providers serve much less: our inference provider offers 1,310,720 tokens for Scout and 524,288 for Maverick. Scout still has the longer window of the two.

In our free chat, however, the difference does not show. To keep the service fast and free, our chat trims long conversations to the most recent part, roughly 12,000 characters of text. So in our chat both models see the same amount of conversation. If you need very long documents, use Scout through an API or on your own hardware; see our API guide.

Images

Both models read images natively, and in our chat you can attach one image per message to either of them. For detailed questions about a photo, chart or screenshot, Maverick tends to give fuller answers. For a quick description or reading text from a picture, Scout is usually fine and a little cheaper to run. If you attach an image while a text-only model is selected, our chat switches to Maverick.

Running them yourself

Neither is a laptop model. Ollama lists Scout at 67 GB and Maverick at 245 GB for its default quantized versions. Scout fits high-memory workstations and single data-center GPUs; Maverick needs a server with several large GPUs. If you want a local Llama on ordinary hardware, Llama 3.1 8B is the practical choice. Both Llama 4 models fall under the Llama 4 Community License, including its EU restriction for multimodal models; see our license guide and run Llama locally.

Cost

Scout is the cheaper model through APIs: $0.10 input and $0.30 output per million tokens, against Maverick's $0.1875 and $0.6525 (OpenRouter list price, Oct 2026). For high-volume tasks such as tagging, extraction or simple summaries, Scout's lower price adds up. In our chat both are free within the same daily message allowance.

Which model for which task

If you are unsure, these everyday examples are a good starting point. They are suggestions, not rules; trying both on your own task is the quickest way to decide.

• Writing a cover letter or blog post: Maverick, for more polished and varied wording.
• Explaining a tricky concept step by step: Maverick, which tends to give fuller explanations.
• Describing a photo or reading a sign in a picture: either; Scout is enough for simple cases.
• Analyzing a chart or a dense screenshot: Maverick.
• Short rewrites, summaries and lists: either; Scout is cheaper if you are paying per token elsewhere.
• Very long documents through an API: Scout, for its longer context window.

A simple habit works well in our chat: start with Maverick, and if you only need quick answers, switch to Scout from the model menu. If an answer from Scout feels thin, regenerate it with Maverick.

Privacy and limits in our chat

Both models are handled the same way here. Your messages pass through our server and AI gateway to the inference provider that runs the model; we do not store message text, and your history stays in your browser. Neither model can search the web, and both share the same free daily message allowance. Both can make mistakes, so check important facts.

Choose Maverick if…

• you want the strongest Llama model for general chat, writing and explanations;
• you ask detailed questions about images;
• quality matters more than cost;
• you are not sure which to pick; it is our default for a reason.

Chat with Llama 4 Maverick

Choose Scout if…

• you need the longest context through an API or your own hardware;
• you want to self-host a Llama 4 model on a single GPU;
• you run high-volume tasks where the lower price matters;
• you want a lighter model for quick image and text questions.

Chat with Llama 4 Scout

More details are on the Llama 4 Maverick and Llama 4 Scout pages. To compare with the previous generation, read Llama 3.3 vs Llama 4.

FAQ

Which is better, Maverick or Scout?

Maverick is larger and generally gives richer answers. Scout is lighter, cheaper and has the longer context window.

Are they equally fast?

Both use 17 billion active parameters per token, so speed is similar. Actual speed depends on the provider and load.

Can I use Scout's 10 million token context in your chat?

No. Our free chat trims long conversations to about 12,000 characters, for both models. Use an API or self-hosting for very long documents.

Do both models read images?

Yes. Both accept images in our chat, one per message.