AI Models · Open-Source vs Paid

Llama 4 Maverick Open vs SASakana Namazu Paid

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

Sakana Namazu — 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

$0.2 /M input
$0.7 /M outputNo per-token fees if you self-host

TypeOpen-weight

Context window1M tokens

MultimodalYes

Self-hostYes

SASakana NamazuPaidSakana AI

$0.95 /M input
$4 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)

TypeProprietary

Context window262K 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 Sakana Namazu if you want frontier capability through a managed API with zero infrastructure to run.

Llama 4 Maverick vs Sakana Namazu specs

Spec	Llama 4 Maverick	Sakana Namazu	Winner
Maker	Meta	Sakana AI	–
Type	Open-weight	Proprietary	Llama 4 Maverick
Context window	1M tokens	262K tokens	Llama 4 Maverick
Input price	$0.2/M · free self-host	$0.95/M	Llama 4 Maverick
Output price	$0.7/M · free self-host	$4/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

5.7×cheaper per output token

Llama 4 Maverick is ~5.7× cheaper than Sakana Namazu on output tokens ($0.7 vs $4 per M tokens).

Choose Llama 4 Maverick if…

You want to self-host or run on your cloud
You need the longer 1M context window
You prioritize data privacy & control
You want the lowest operating costs
You are building open or reproducible AI

SAChoose Sakana Namazu 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	Sakana Namazu
Open weights (downloadable)	✓	✗
Self-hostable	✓	✗
Runs fully offline	✓	✗
Vision / multimodal	✓	✓
Tool / function calling	✓	✓
1M+ context window	✓	✗

Benchmarks: Llama 4 Maverick vs Sakana Namazu

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

Llama 4 Maverick

Sakana Namazu

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

96.3 tok/s

–

Latency

0.57s

–

Intelligence per $

–

Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.

How Llama 4 Maverick and Sakana Namazu score

🏆 Best value & openness: Llama 4 Maverick (5.0 vs 3.1 / 5)

Criterion	Llama 4 Maverick	Sakana Namazu
Cost-efficiency	5.0	4.0
Context window	5.0	4.0
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...

Sakana Namazu Paid

Sakana AI · Proprietary

Sakana Namazu is a Japanese-specialized reasoning model from Sakana AI, based on Kimi K2.6 with additional training for Japanese language and business contexts. It is suited for Japanese instruction following,...

Other models in these families

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

Other variants tracked

R1 Distill Llama 70BLlama 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 3.3 Euryale 70BLlama Guard 4 12BLlama 3 8B Lunaris

Frequently asked questions

Is Llama 4 Maverick as good as Sakana Namazu?

Llama 4 Maverick is open-weight and competitive on many tasks, but Sakana Namazu 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. Sakana Namazu is API-only and cannot be self-hosted.

How much cheaper is Llama 4 Maverick?

Llama 4 Maverick costs $0.7/M output vs $4/M for Sakana Namazu — roughly 6x cheaper via API, and free if you self-host.

Llama 4 Maverick vs Sakana Namazu — 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 Sakana Namazu if you want frontier capability through a managed API with zero infrastructure to run.

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