Moe Architecture

Meta released the Llama 4 family in April 2025, and by mid-2026 these models have settled into clear roles. Llama 4 Scout is the long-context specialist with a 10 million token window and the cheapest per-token cost, while Llama 4 Maverick is the frontier-quality generalist that beats GPT-4o on several benchmarks. Both share the same 17B active parameters via Mixture-of-Experts architecture, but they’re built for very different jobs. Here’s exactly when to use each one, with real pricing, benchmark data, and deployment strategies. ...

Llama 4 is a model family, not a promise that every hosting provider offers the same endpoint, context limit or price. A developer needs two records: which model artifact is intended and what the chosen service actually supports. This guide uses Meta’s model card and license, then provides a provider-contract checklist. It does not claim a live inference test or a GPU fit measurement. Scout and Maverick are different artifacts Meta’s Llama 4 model card records the release date as April 5, 2025 and describes: ...