What is Llama AI?

Llama AI in one minute

Llama is a family of large language models made by Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. When people search for "Llama AI", they usually mean one of these models or a chat app that runs one. The first version appeared on February 24, 2023 under the name LLaMA, short for Large Language Model Meta AI. Meta has released several generations since then, and as of October 2026 the newest Llama generation is still Llama 4, published on April 5, 2025.

What sets Llama apart from assistants like ChatGPT or Gemini is how Meta shares it. Meta publishes the model weights, the large files that hold everything the model learned. Anyone who accepts the license can download them, run them on their own hardware, fine-tune them and build products on top. The usual term is "open weights": you get the trained model, but under Meta's own license with conditions.

On Llama.Online you can talk to four real Llama models in your browser for free: Llama 4 Maverick, Llama 4 Scout, Llama 3.3 70B and Llama 3.1 8B. We are an independent website and are not run by Meta. The models run on a cloud inference provider, and our site passes your messages to them and streams the answers back.

Who makes Llama

Llama is developed and published by Meta Platforms, Inc. Each release comes with a model card describing the training data, supported languages, intended uses and license. Meta publishes the cards and weights on Hugging Face under the meta-llama organization.

In 2025 Meta reorganized its AI work under a new group called Meta Superintelligence Labs, which now builds Meta's newest models under a different name, Muse. Llama remains Meta's open-weight family and is still widely used, but it is no longer where Meta puts its newest work.

How Llama works, in plain words

A Llama model is a neural network trained on a very large amount of text and, for Llama 4, images as well. It writes an answer by predicting the next small piece of text, called a token, over and over until the reply is complete. During training it picks up grammar, facts, writing styles and patterns of reasoning. Meta then tunes "instruct" versions on example conversations so they follow requests and reply helpfully. The models in our chat are those instruct versions.

Three ideas explain most of the differences between Llama models:

• Size. Models are described by their parameters, the numbers inside the network. Llama 3.1 8B has 8 billion and Llama 3.3 70B has 70 billion. Bigger usually means more knowledge and better handling of nuance, but also slower answers and more expensive hardware.
• Mixture of experts. Llama 4 is the first Llama built this way. Each model contains many expert sub-networks and uses only some of them for each token. According to Meta's model card, Llama 4 Maverick has 400 billion parameters in total and uses 17 billion per token, while Llama 4 Scout has 109 billion in total and also uses 17 billion per token. The result is a lot of stored knowledge with fast answers.
• Context window. This is how much text the model can take into account at once. Meta's model cards list 128K tokens for Llama 3.1 and 3.3, 1M for Llama 4 Maverick and 10M for Llama 4 Scout. Hosting providers often offer less than the card's maximum, and chat apps, including ours, trim very long conversations.

Every Llama model also has a knowledge cut-off. It learned from data up to a certain date and knows nothing that happened after it. Meta lists December 2023 for Llama 3.1 and 3.3 and August 2024 for Llama 4. A Llama model cannot browse the internet on its own, and our chat does not add web access either.

The Llama family at a glance

The full story, with what changed in each release, is on our Llama history page. Information-only pages cover Llama 3.2 and Llama Guard 4.

What happened after Llama 4

If you read older articles, you might expect a Llama 5 by now. There is none as of October 2026. In April 2025 Meta previewed a much larger teacher model, Llama 4 Behemoth, and said it was still training. Reuters reported in May 2025 that its release had been delayed, and Meta has not published it. Meta's newer models are called Muse instead:

• Muse Spark (April 8, 2026) is the first model from Meta Superintelligence Labs. It powers the Meta AI app and meta.ai. Its weights were not released; Meta offered it to selected partners through an API.
• Muse Glimmer (August 10, 2026) is a 30-billion-parameter model built for local agents. Meta released its weights on Hugging Face under the Apache 2.0 license.
• Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full (October 12, 2026) are what Meta calls its most capable models so far. They are offered through Meta Model API and Meta's Muse Code tool, without downloadable weights.
• Muse Spark Open (October 15, 2026) is an open-weight version of Muse Spark under a new Muse Model License, which Meta describes as having limited commercial terms.

Two practical changes came with this shift. First, the Meta AI assistant in Meta's apps now runs on Muse rather than Llama. Second, Meta shut down its hosted Llama API preview on July 6, 2026. Meta's developer help center now says Llama models are not served through its new Meta Model API and that Llama is something you download and host yourself. Llama models are still downloadable from Meta and available from many cloud providers, which is how our chat uses them.

What Llama is good at

• Everyday questions and explanations. Ask it to explain a topic simply, compare options or walk you through a process step by step.
• Writing and editing. Drafts, emails, social posts, stories, rewrites in a different tone, and proofreading.
• Summaries. Paste an article or notes and ask for the key points, a short version or a list of action items.
• Many languages. Llama 4 officially supports 12 languages: Arabic, English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Tagalog, Thai and Vietnamese. Llama 3.1 and 3.3 support 8. Other languages often work too, with more mistakes.
• Coding help. Explaining code, writing small functions, finding bugs and translating between programming languages.
• Images, with Llama 4. Describe a photo, read a chart or screenshot, or answer a question about a picture.
• Building your own products. Companies can run Llama on their own servers, keep data in-house and fine-tune it.

Limits to keep in mind

• It can be wrong and sound sure. Like every language model, Llama sometimes invents facts, names, numbers or sources. Check anything important.
• No live information. It does not know recent news, prices or events after its cut-off, and it cannot look them up.
• Not a professional. It can give general information about health, law or money, but it is not a doctor, lawyer or financial adviser.
• No longer the newest. Llama 4 dates from April 2025, and newer models, including Meta's own Muse Wonder, are generally ahead on demanding coding and long agent tasks. For everyday chat, writing and images, Llama 4 remains very capable.

Open weights, the license and "Built with Llama"

Since Llama 2, each release has come with its own Llama Community License. In short, it lets you use, copy, modify and redistribute the models for free, including commercially. In return you must follow Meta's acceptable use policy, show "Built with Llama" in products that use the models, start the name of any model you train from Llama with "Llama", and include a copy of the license when you share the weights. Companies whose products had more than 700 million monthly active users when a version was released must ask Meta for a separate license. For the multimodal models in Llama 3.2 and Llama 4, the acceptable use policy does not grant the license rights to people and companies based in the European Union, although end users of a product built with them are not affected.

That is why our footer says "Built with Llama". Our Llama license page explains the terms in more detail, and our guide to open-source AI explains why many people say "open weights" rather than "open source" for Llama.

Ways to use Llama AI

Chat in your browser

The quickest way is our free Llama chat. There is nothing to install and no account to create, and it works on phones and computers.

Run it on your own computer

Tools such as Ollama, LM Studio and llama.cpp download a Llama model and run it locally, even offline. Small models like Llama 3.2 3B or Llama 3.1 8B run on many laptops; the large ones need serious hardware. See how to run Llama locally.

Call it from code

Developers can reach Llama through cloud providers with an OpenAI-compatible API, for example OpenRouter. Our Llama API guide has ready-to-copy examples and current list prices.

How to start chatting with Llama here

1. Open the chat. Llama 4 Maverick is selected by default.
2. Pick another model from the model menu if you like. Our guide to choosing the right Llama model helps you decide.
3. Type your question, or attach a photo or screenshot when you use a Llama 4 model.
4. Ask follow-up questions, and check important facts against a reliable source.

Every visitor gets a free daily allowance, currently 100 messages per day, shared with our AI tools. Tips: writing good prompts.

FAQ

Is Llama AI free?

The models are free to download under Meta's license, but running them costs hardware or cloud time. Our chat is free with a daily message allowance and is supported by ads.

Is Llama the same as Meta AI?

No. Meta AI is Meta's assistant inside its apps and on meta.ai. It once ran on Llama, but since April 2026 Meta says it is powered by Muse Spark. Llama is the open-weight model family that anyone can use, including independent sites like ours.

Is Llama open source?

Its weights are openly downloadable, but the Llama Community License adds conditions that classic open-source licenses do not have, such as the acceptable use policy and the 700 million user rule. That is why "open weights" is the more precise term.

Is there a Llama 5?

No. As of October 2026 the newest Llama generation is Llama 4. Meta's newer models are named Muse, and they are not part of the Llama family or our chat.

Which Llama model should I use?

Start with Llama 4 Maverick for most tasks and for images. Use Scout for long documents, Llama 3.3 70B for text-only work, and Llama 3.1 8B when you want the fastest short answers.

Can Llama read images?

Llama 4 Maverick and Llama 4 Scout accept images, and so do the Llama 3.2 vision models. In our chat you can attach one image per message when a Llama 4 model is selected. Llama cannot create images.