Meta vs Nebius AI: Token Pricing, Speed & Intelligence
Full comparison of Meta and Nebius AI — live token pricing, latency, throughput, context window, strengths, weaknesses, and best use cases. Updated July 2026.
Meta
Llama 4 & Muse Spark — the world's most widely deployed open-weight models
Meta AI is the creator of the Llama model family, the most widely used open-weight LLMs in the world. Llama models are available via Meta's own API and through dozens of third-party inference providers. The Llama 4 series includes Behemoth (2T params), Scout, and Maverick, with 1M-token context windows. Meta also offers Muse Spark, a proprietary multimodal model. Because Llama weights are open, teams can self-host on GPU cloud for dramatically lower per-token costs at scale.
Nebius AI
European cloud AI — affordable open-source inference from ex-Yandex team
Nebius AI is a European cloud provider built by the team behind Yandex Cloud, offering GPU compute and LLM inference services. Their inference API hosts Llama and other open-weight models at competitive prices, with data centres in Europe for GDPR-compliant deployments.
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Live token pricing
Strengths & weaknesses
Meta
Nebius AI
Key differentiators
The only frontier-class model family available as open weights — enabling self-hosted inference on GPU cloud at a fraction of API pricing for high-volume workloads.
European-native infrastructure with GDPR-compliant LLM inference and GPU compute from the same provider — ideal for EU businesses.
Frequently asked questions
Meta FAQs
What is the Llama 4 context window?
Llama 4 Scout and Maverick support 1,000,000-token (1M) context windows. Llama 4 Behemoth also targets 1M context. This makes Llama 4 competitive with Gemini 1.5 Pro for long-document and multi-document tasks.
How much does the Meta Llama API cost?
Llama 3.2 1B is $0.02/1M tokens in/out. Llama 3.2 3B is $0.03/$0.05. Llama 3.1 8B is $0.02/$0.05. Llama 3.2 90B Vision is $1.20/$1.20. Muse Spark 1.1 is $1.25/$4.25. Llama 4 Behemoth pricing is not yet publicly listed.
Can I self-host Llama models?
Yes — all Llama 3.x and Llama 4 Scout/Maverick weights are publicly available under the Llama Community License. You can run them on any GPU cloud provider. A single H100 at ~$2.50/hr can serve Llama 3.1 8B at very high throughput, making self-hosting cost-effective above ~10M tokens/day.
Nebius AI FAQs
Is Nebius AI GDPR-compliant?
Yes. Nebius AI operates data centres in Europe (Amsterdam and other EU locations), making it a strong choice for European businesses with GDPR data residency requirements.
What models does Nebius AI offer?
Nebius AI hosts Llama 3.x and other popular open-weight models via their inference API. They also offer GPU compute for self-hosted model deployment.
Who built Nebius AI?
Nebius AI was founded by the team behind Yandex Cloud, one of Europe's largest cloud providers. They bring significant cloud infrastructure experience to the AI inference market.
Provider resources
Meta — Llama 4 & Muse Spark — the world's most widely deployed open-weight models
Meta AI is the creator of the Llama model family, the most widely used open-weight LLMs in the world. Llama models are available via Meta's own API and through dozens of third-party inference providers. The Llama 4 series includes Behemoth (2T params), Scout, and Maverick, with 1M-token context windows. Meta also offers Muse Spark, a proprietary multimodal model. Because Llama weights are open, teams can self-host on GPU cloud for dramatically lower per-token costs at scale.
The only frontier-class model family available as open weights — enabling self-hosted inference on GPU cloud at a fraction of API pricing for high-volume workloads.
Nebius AI — European cloud AI — affordable open-source inference from ex-Yandex team
Nebius AI is a European cloud provider built by the team behind Yandex Cloud, offering GPU compute and LLM inference services. Their inference API hosts Llama and other open-weight models at competitive prices, with data centres in Europe for GDPR-compliant deployments.
European-native infrastructure with GDPR-compliant LLM inference and GPU compute from the same provider — ideal for EU businesses.
Key strengths compared
Meta
- ▸Open-weight models — self-host on any GPU cloud for lowest per-token cost at scale
- ▸Llama 4 Behemoth: 2T parameter frontier model with 1M context window
- ▸Widest third-party hosting ecosystem — available on AWS, Azure, GCP, Together AI, Groq, and 20+ others
Nebius AI
- ▸European data centres — GDPR-compliant by default
- ▸Competitive pricing on open-weight models
- ▸GPU compute + LLM inference from one provider
Provider category context
Meta is a open source host, founded in 2023. Nebius AI is a inference api, founded in 2023. The category difference means these providers serve partially overlapping use cases — compare the model lists and pricing tables above to find the best fit for your specific workload.
How to choose between them
Choose Meta if you need open-weight models — self-host on any gpu cloud for lowest per-token cost at scale. Choose Nebius AI if you need european data centres — gdpr-compliant by default. For high-volume production workloads, run a cost comparison using the token pricing table above with your actual prompt/completion token ratio — the cheapest provider depends heavily on your input-to-output token ratio.