AI Models · Open-Source vs Paid

Llama 4 Maverick Open vs Nano Banana 2.1 Paid

Llama 4 Maverick vs Nano Banana 2.1 compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Can the open-source model replace the paid one? Full 2026 breakdown.

Nano Banana 2.1 — full profile ›

Prices & specs refreshed from live data · olud.ai

Open-model prices = cheapest provider via OpenRouter; official maker rates may be higher.

Llama 4 MaverickOpenMeta

$0.19 /M input
$0.65 /M outputNo per-token fees if you self-host

TypeOpen-weight

Context window524K tokens

MultimodalYes

Self-hostYes

Nano Banana 2.1PaidGoogle

$1.5 /M input
$7.5 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)

TypeProprietary

Context window66K tokens

MultimodalYes

Self-hostNo

Choose Llama 4 Maverick if you want to self-host, keep your data private and skip per-token fees — it's open-weight and runs on your own hardware. Choose Nano Banana 2.1 if you want frontier capability through a managed API with zero infrastructure to run.

Llama 4 Maverick vs Nano Banana 2.1 specs

Spec	Llama 4 Maverick	Nano Banana 2.1	Winner
Maker	Meta	Google	–
Type	Open-weight	Proprietary	Llama 4 Maverick
Context window	524K tokens	66K tokens	Llama 4 Maverick
Input price	$0.19/M · free self-host	$1.5/M	Llama 4 Maverick
Output price	$0.65/M · free self-host	$7.5/M	Llama 4 Maverick
Vision / multimodal	Yes	Yes	= Tie
Tool / function calling	Yes	Yes	= Tie
Self-hostable	Yes	No (API only)	Llama 4 Maverick
License	Llama Community	Proprietary	Llama 4 Maverick

Price gap & when to choose each

12×cheaper per output token

Llama 4 Maverick is ~12× cheaper than Nano Banana 2.1 on output tokens ($0.65 vs $7.5 per M tokens).

Choose Llama 4 Maverick if…

You want to self-host or run on your cloud
You need the longer 524K context window
You prioritize data privacy & control
You want the lowest operating costs
You are building open or reproducible AI

Choose Nano Banana 2.1 if…

You want frontier performance through a managed API
You value reliability & ecosystem
You don't want to manage infrastructure

Feature comparison

Capability	Llama 4 Maverick	Nano Banana 2.1
Open weights (downloadable)	✓	✗
Self-hostable	✓	✗
Runs fully offline	✓	✗
Vision / multimodal	✓	✓
Tool / function calling	✓	✓
1M+ context window	✗	✗

Benchmarks: Llama 4 Maverick vs Nano Banana 2.1

Independent benchmark scores measured by Artificial Analysis. Higher is better (except latency).

Llama 4 Maverick

Nano Banana 2.1

Intelligence index

9.3

–

Coding index

16.3

–

Math index

19.3

–

GPQA

67.1%

–

MMLU-Pro

80.9%

–

Humanity's Last Exam

4.9%

–

Long Context Reasoning

50%

–

LiveCodeBench

39.7%

–

SciCode

31.7%

–

MATH-500

88.9%

–

AIME

39%

–

AIME 2025

19.3%

–

IFBench

43%

–

τ²-Bench

17.8%

–

τ-Bench Banking

3.7%

–

Terminal-Bench

7.9%

–

Terminal-Bench Hard

6.8%

–

Speed

52.2 tok/s

–

Latency

0.56s

–

Intelligence per $

22.3

–

Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.

How Llama 4 Maverick and Nano Banana 2.1 score

🏆 Best value & openness: Llama 4 Maverick (4.9 vs 2.9 / 5)

Criterion	Llama 4 Maverick	Nano Banana 2.1
Cost-efficiency	5.0	4.0
Context window	4.5	3.0
Openness	5.0	1.5
Self-hosting	5.0	1.0
Multimodality	5.0	5.0

Scores come from live data — output price (cost), context length, open vs closed weights (openness & self-hosting) and vision/tool support (multimodality). Raw task quality isn't scored here; it depends on your benchmark — see the verdict.

What each model is

Llama 4 Maverick Open

Meta · Open-weight

Llama 4 Maverick 17B Instruct (128E) is a high-capacity multimodal language model from Meta, built on a mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture with 128 experts and 17 billion active parameters per forward...

Nano Banana 2.1 Paid

Google · Proprietary

Nano Banana 2.1 (Gemini Nano Banana 2.1) is Google's image generation and editing model on the Flash tier, succeeding Nano Banana 2 and Nano Banana Pro. It improves product recontextualization,...

Other models in these families

These variants are tracked but not compared here — one page per family keeps the comparison readable.

Other variants tracked

Llama 3.3 70B InstructLlama 3.1 8B InstructLlama 3.1 70B InstructLlama 4 ScoutHermes 3 70B InstructLlama 3.2 3B InstructLlama 3.2 1B InstructAion-RP 1.0 (8B)Hermes 3 405B InstructLlama 3.1 Euryale 70B v2.2Llama Guard 4 12BLlama 3 8B Lunaris

Frequently asked questions

Is Llama 4 Maverick as good as Nano Banana 2.1?

Llama 4 Maverick is open-weight and competitive on many tasks, but Nano Banana 2.1 may still lead on the hardest reasoning and agentic work. The gap keeps narrowing — benchmark both on your actual use case before deciding.

Can I run Llama 4 Maverick locally?

Yes. Llama 4 Maverick has open weights, so you can self-host it on your own GPUs or run it via a low-cost API. Nano Banana 2.1 is API-only and cannot be self-hosted.

How much cheaper is Llama 4 Maverick?

Llama 4 Maverick costs $0.65/M output vs $7.5/M for Nano Banana 2.1 — roughly 12x cheaper via API, and free if you self-host.

Llama 4 Maverick vs Nano Banana 2.1 — which should I pick in 2026?

Choose Llama 4 Maverick if you want to self-host, keep your data private and skip per-token fees — it's open-weight and runs on your own hardware. Choose Nano Banana 2.1 if you want frontier capability through a managed API with zero infrastructure to run.

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