Llama 4 (Meta) vs Qwen (Alibaba)
Which one should you pick? Here's the full breakdown.
Llama 4 (Meta)
Meta's open-weights flagship family -- Scout (10M context), Maverick (multimodal 400B MoE), Behemoth in preview
Qwen (Alibaba)
Alibaba's open-weights family -- Qwen3.5, Qwen3-Coder-Next, Qwen3-VL, Qwen3-Max. Apache 2.0 flagship sizes.
| Category | Llama 4 (Meta) | Qwen (Alibaba) |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of Use | 5.0 | 7.0 |
| Output Quality | 8.5 | 9.0 |
| Value | 9.0 | 10.0 |
| Features | 9.0 | 9.0 |
| Overall | 7.9 | 8.8 |
Pricing Comparison
| Feature | Llama 4 (Meta) | Qwen (Alibaba) |
|---|---|---|
| Free Tier | Yes | Yes |
| Starting Price | $0 | $0 |
Benchmark Head-to-Head
Llama 4 Maverick (17B/400B MoE) vs Qwen3.5-397B MoE
| Benchmark | Llama 4 (Meta) | Qwen (Alibaba) |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 80.5% | 83.5% |
| GPQA Diamond | 69.8% | 78.2% |
| HumanEval | 88% | 92.5% |
Which Should You Pick?
Pick Llama 4 (Meta) if...
Developers and teams who need a permissively-licensed open-weights model with strong tooling, long context (Scout), or multimodal (Maverick). Safe default choice given the ecosystem.
Visit Llama 4 (Meta)Pick Qwen (Alibaba) if...
- ✓Easier to use (7 vs 5)
- ✓Better value for money (10/10)
- ✓Stronger on graduate-level science questions (+8.4% on GPQA Diamond)
Developers who want frontier-tier open weights with Apache 2.0 licensing. Qwen3-Coder-Next is arguably the best local coding model; Qwen3.5-397B is a top-3 open generalist.
Visit Qwen (Alibaba)Our Verdict
Qwen (Alibaba) edges out Llama 4 (Meta) with a 8.8 vs 7.9 overall score. Both are solid picks, but Qwen (Alibaba) has the advantage in output quality.