Llama 4 Maverick vs GPT-5.5 — open-weight Meta versus proprietary OpenAI. Below is the full side-by-side: specifications, API pricing, context window, local hardware requirements, and a clear, data-driven recommendation on which to pick.
| Spec | Llama 4 Maverick | GPT-5.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Meta | OpenAI |
| Type | Multimodal (MoE) | LLM (reasoning) |
| Parameters | 400B total / 17B active (MoE) | Undisclosed |
| Context window | 1M | 1.05M |
| Modality | Text, Image → Text | Text, Vision → Text |
| License | Llama 4 Community (EU-restricted) | Proprietary |
| Open weights | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| Input price ($/1M) | $0.15 | $5.00 |
| Output price ($/1M) | $0.6 | $30.00 |
| VRAM (4-bit) | ~240 GB | — |
| Min GPU (local) | Multi-GPU server | — |
| Released | 2025 | 2026 |
Key differences
- Cost: Llama 4 Maverick is 4186% cheaper than GPT-5.5 on a blended-token basis.
- Context: GPT-5.5 wins on context window (1.05M vs 1M) — better for long documents, large codebases and big RAG inputs.
- Openness: Llama 4 Maverick is open-weight (self-hostable, private, fine-tunable); GPT-5.5 is proprietary (API-only, but fully managed).
- Run Llama 4 Maverick locally: ~~240 GB at 4-bit (min Multi-GPU server).
Which should you choose?
Choose Llama 4 Maverick if you want the lower per-token cost for high-volume workloads, or you want to self-host, fine-tune, or keep data fully private.
Choose GPT-5.5 if you need the larger context window, or you prefer a fully managed API with no infrastructure to run.
→ Estimate real costs in the API cost calculator · check local hardware in the VRAM calculator · browse all 30+ models.
All specs and prices are pulled live from our AI models database and kept current. Compare either model against others, or estimate your own monthly spend with the free calculators above.