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Llama 4 Maverick vs Phi-4: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

Phi-4 is significantly cheaper at $0.07/$0.14 per million tokens vs $0.20/$0.60. Llama 4 Maverick is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1280 vs 1130. Phi-4 is faster at 160 tokens/sec vs 90 tokens/sec. Llama 4 Maverick ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1290 vs 1150. Llama 4 Maverick offers a larger 1049K context window vs 16K.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureLlama 4 MaverickPhi-4
ProviderMetaMicrosoft
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.200$0.070
Output Price / 1M tokens$0.600$0.140
Context Window1.048576M16.384K
Max Output Tokens32,7684,096
Arena ELO1,2901,150
Coding ELO1,2801,130
TTFT (ms)250100
Tokens/sec90160
MultimodalYesNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesNo
VisionYesNo
When to Use Llama 4 Maverick

Choose Llama 4 Maverick when you need: open-source model with strong performance, very affordable via hosted providers, 1m context window, mixture-of-experts architecture. It excels at chatbots, coding, general-purpose, open-source tasks. Its 1049K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

Strengths:

  • Open-source model with strong performance
  • Very affordable via hosted providers
  • 1M context window
  • Mixture-of-experts architecture

Best for:

chatbotscodinggeneral-purposeopen-source
When to Use Phi-4

Choose Phi-4 when you need: ultra-low cost for a capable model, strong math for its size (14b params), very fast inference, can run on consumer hardware. It excels at cost-sensitive, edge-deployment, math, lightweight-tasks tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

Strengths:

  • Ultra-low cost for a capable model
  • Strong math for its size (14B params)
  • Very fast inference
  • Can run on consumer hardware

Best for:

cost-sensitiveedge-deploymentmathlightweight-tasks

Frequently Asked Questions

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