Llama
Meta's family of open-weight models, the most widely deployed base for self-hosted AI.
Llama is Meta's family of open-weight large language models. The weights are downloadable, so you can run, fine-tune, and inspect them on your own hardware.
Its scale of adoption is its strongest feature: nearly every serving runtime, quantisation tool, and fine-tuning library supports Llama first, so the surrounding ecosystem is the deepest of any open model.
Where it fits
The default open-weight choice when models must run inside your own environment and you want the widest tooling support.
Where it does not fit
Its community licence carries conditions: review them for large-scale commercial use rather than assuming it is unrestricted.
Alternatives to Llama
The closest options on the map, and where each fits instead.
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Qwen Open-weight model family
A strong fit when you need to size a self-hosted model to specific hardware, or when multilingual coverage matters.
Unlike Llama Hosted APIMaturity: established
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Mistral (open models) Open-weight model family
A fit when you want capable, efficient open weights with a permissive licence that is straightforward for commercial use.
Unlike Llama Maturity: established
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Gemma Open-weight model family
A fit for self-hosted use cases that need a small, efficient model with the polish of a major lab.
Unlike Llama Maturity: established
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Command R Open-weight model family
A fit when a self-hosted model needs to be good specifically at RAG with citations and tool use.
Unlike Llama Maturity: established
Pairs with
Commonly used alongside it.
