Llama 4 Came Out and It's Free — Here's What I Actually Did With It

Meta has been releasing Llama models for a while now and each version has been an improvement, but Llama 4 feels like a bigger jump. Two main versions: Scout and Maverick. Scout has a 10 million token context window — that number is so large it barely seems real. Maverick is the more capable general model.

Both are open weights. This is the part that matters for everyone except Meta: open weights means the actual model files are downloadable. Every local AI tool — Jan.ai, Ollama, LM Studio — can add it. You can run it on your own computer, no internet required, no paying anyone.

I've spent the past couple weeks using it in three different ways. Each works differently and has different trade-offs worth knowing about.

meta.ai is Meta's consumer chat interface. Log in with a Facebook or Instagram account — most people in India already have one — and start chatting. You're talking to Llama 4. No setup, no API key, nothing to install.

I used this first just to get a feel for the model quality before bothering with anything more complex. First impression: noticeably better than Llama 3. Answers are more coherent, less likely to go off-topic midway through a response.

The obvious limitation is that your conversations are going to Meta's servers. If what you're doing is sensitive — client work, personal stuff — this isn't the option. For general testing and casual use, it's fine and it's fast.

Groq (groq.com) runs Llama 4 on their custom chips and it is genuinely fast in a way that's surprising. I asked it the same questions I'd asked on meta.ai and the response started appearing almost instantly. Cloud AI usually has a small lag before output starts — Groq barely has any.

The free tier on Groq gives you an API key. That means you can use Llama 4 in your own scripts and tools at no cost. Rate limits exist but for personal projects they're not a real constraint in normal use.

This is where I'd send a developer who wants to build something with Llama 4 without paying. Free API key, fast inference, same model quality. I used it to test a few prompt variations for a small automation and it was the smoothest free option I've had for this kind of work.

I tried this through Jan.ai since that's what I already have set up. Opened Jan, found Llama 4 Scout in the Hub, clicked download. The model file was about 5-6GB. Download took a while on my connection.

Once it loaded, response speed was... okay. Not fast, but acceptable for questions that didn't need a long answer. Anything over a paragraph or two and I was waiting noticeably. My machine has 16GB RAM — on 8GB I'd expect it to be slower and possibly hit swap memory.

The upside is complete privacy. Nothing leaves the machine. No account, no API, no logs on anyone's server. For working with sensitive code or documents, that's worth the speed trade-off. For casual AI use where you just want quick answers, meta.ai is more comfortable.

Better than I expected for an open model. For straightforward tasks — explaining a concept, writing a summary, basic code help — it's competent enough that I didn't feel like I was getting a downgraded experience.

For hard things it still falls behind Claude and Gemini 2.5 Pro. Asked Llama 4 to debug a tricky async issue in a React app and the answer was plausible but missed the actual cause. Claude got it right. This is expected — Meta doesn't have the same training compute as Anthropic or Google, and the model is free.

The 10 million token context window on Scout is interesting on paper. In practice, running that much context locally requires hardware most people don't have. Through Groq's API it works better, but I haven't yet found a real use case in my work where I needed more than what Claude's context handles.

Developers building tools or automations on a budget — Groq's free API key gives you production-usable Llama 4 at no cost. That's a real option for side projects and experiments.

Anyone interested in local AI — if you want to understand how local models work, Llama 4 through Jan.ai or Ollama is currently the best quality free option for doing that. Better than running older models.

People in India who can't or don't want to pay for AI subscriptions — meta.ai works fine here, no card required, no rupee cost. For general AI use it's a real free alternative to Claude or Gemini.

If you're already on Claude Pro or Gemini Advanced and happy with them, Llama 4 won't replace those. It's a free alternative, not an upgrade. For what it is — free, open, usable — it's genuinely good.