Llama vs Qwen
The two default local models, moving at very different speeds. Llama still has the largest open ecosystem, more tooling, quantisations and fine-tunes than anything else, but Llama 4 dates to April 2025 and Meta's newer open work ships under the Muse name instead. Qwen has shipped through 3.8 in the same window and tends to punch above its parameter count on code. Ecosystem versus momentum.
| Llama | Qwen | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Meta | Alibaba |
| Current release | Llama 4 | Qwen3.8 |
| Tier | Open weights | Open weights |
| Context | 10M | 256K |
| Cost | Free tier | Free tier |
| Modalities | text, vision | text, vision |
| Open weights | Yes | Yes |
Cost is a tier, not a quote, providers change prices often. Check Meta and Alibaba before you commit. Last updated 2026-09-04.
Which one to pick
LlamaMeta · Llama 4
The widest open ecosystem, tooling and fine-tunes, though Meta's newer open work ships as Muse
Reach for it when- Maximum tooling and community support
- Existing fine-tunes you want to build on
QwenAlibaba · Qwen3.8
A strong open model for local use, especially good at coding for its size
Reach for it when- Better coding for the same model size
- Multilingual output