Meta
Meta AI develops the Llama family of open-weight large language models under the Llama Community License. Llama 3.3 70B delivers GPT-4o-class performance at a fraction of the cost, while Llama 3.1 8B provides the most capable sub-10B open model. Meta's open-weight approach enables self-hosting on consumer GPUs and API deployment through third-party providers like Groq and Cerebras.
Why Choose Meta?
Llama 3.3 70B uses a dense transformer architecture with grouped-query attention (GQA) that reduces KV-cache memory by 8x compared to multi-head attention while maintaining quality. The model was pre-trained on 15 trillion tokens of publicly available data with a carefully curated quality filter pipeline. Meta's Llama 3.1 8B achieves competitive coding performance through a supervised fine-tuning dataset of 10 billion tokens including code from GitHub, Stack Overflow, and synthetic code generation. Their model card provides detailed benchmarks, training configurations, and safety evaluations, establishing a benchmark for model transparency in the open-weights ecosystem.
Pricing Overview
Meta Llama models are free to self-host under the Llama Community License. API access through Groq costs $0.88/M input/output for Llama 3.3 70B. No credit card is required for self-hosting. The most cost-effective way to run Llama 3.3 70B in production is through Groq's API at $0.88/M tokens with 30 RPM free access.
Official Model Portfolio (6)
| MODEL | CONTEXT | INPUT $/1M | OUTPUT $/1M | SPEED | FREE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Llama 3.3 70B Instruct | 128K | $0.00 | $0.00 | 500 tok/s | Yes |
| Llama 3.1 8B Instruct | 128K | $0.01 | $0.01 | 800 tok/s | Yes |
| Llama 3.2 3B Instruct | 128K | $0.02 | $0.02 | 1,200 tok/s | Yes |
| Llama 3.2 1B Instruct | 128K | $0.01 | $0.01 | 1,500 tok/s | Yes |
| Llama 3.1 70B Instruct | 128K | $0.35 | $0.35 | 90 tok/s | — |
| Llama 3.1 405B Instruct | 128K | $2.50 | $2.50 | 14 tok/s | — |
⚡ Verified Free Tier & SDK Drop-In
Credit Card Required: No
🧠 Hardware Hosting Sizing
| MODEL | FP16 VRAM | INT4 VRAM | MIN GPU | CHEAPEST CLOUD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Llama 3.3 70B Instruct | 140 GB | 40 GB | RTX 4090 24GB | View Deals → |
| Llama 3.1 8B Instruct | 16 GB | 6 GB | RTX 4090 24GB | View Deals → |
| Llama 3.2 3B Instruct | 8 GB | 3 GB | RTX 4060 8GB | View Deals → |
| Llama 3.2 1B Instruct | 4 GB | 2 GB | Any x86 CPU | View Deals → |
| Llama 3.1 70B Instruct | 140 GB | 40 GB | RTX 4090 24GB | View Deals → |
| Llama 3.1 405B Instruct | 810 GB | 230 GB | 12x H100 80GB | View Deals → |
⚖️ Top 3 Competitor Alternatives
| COMPANY | TYPE | FREE TIER | FLAGSHIP | LINK |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mistral AI | European Open & Commercial Lab | No | mistral-nemo-12b, mistral-7b-v0.3 | View → |
| Alibaba Qwen | Open Weights Leader | Yes | qwen-2.5-coder-32b, qwen-2.5-72b | View → |
| DeepSeek | Open Weights & Frontier Research | No | deepseek-r1, deepseek-v3 | View → |