MetavsxAI

Meta vs xAI: Token Pricing, Speed & Intelligence

Full comparison of Meta and xAI — 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.

Self-hosted inferenceCost-optimised at scaleEdge/on-deviceChatVisionCoding

Proprietary modelsHosts open weights

xAI

Grok 3 — Elon Musk's frontier AI with real-time web access

xAI is Elon Musk's AI company, building the Grok model family. Grok 3 is a frontier-tier model with a 131K context window and strong vision capabilities. Grok 3 Mini is a cost-efficient reasoning model. The API is available via the xAI platform with competitive frontier pricing.

Real-time dataReasoningVisionChatResearch

Proprietary models

Key metrics

Cheapest input ($/1M)

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Cheapest output ($/1M)

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Peak throughput

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Best latency (TTFT)

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Intelligence score

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Context window

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Live token pricing

Strengths & weaknesses

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

Llama 3.2 1B/3B models run on-device (mobile, edge)

No vendor lock-in — switch inference providers without changing model weights

Self-hosting requires GPU infrastructure expertise

Meta's own API has limited availability vs third-party hosts

Llama 4 Behemoth pricing not yet publicly listed

Smaller proprietary model lineup vs OpenAI/Anthropic

xAI

Real-time web access and X/Twitter data integration

Grok 3 Mini is a cost-efficient reasoning model

Strong vision capabilities on Grok 3

Competitive frontier pricing

OpenAI-compatible API

Smaller ecosystem and fewer integrations than OpenAI

No open-weight models

Limited model selection compared to frontier competitors

Key differentiators

Meta

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.

xAI

Unique access to real-time X/Twitter data and web search — the only frontier model with native social media grounding.

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.

xAI FAQs

What is Grok and how much does it cost?

Grok is xAI's family of frontier LLMs. Grok 3 costs $3/1M input and $15/1M output tokens. Grok 3 Mini is a cheaper reasoning model at lower price points. Both support vision and function calling.

Does Grok have real-time web access?

Yes. Grok models can access real-time web content and X/Twitter data, making them uniquely suited for applications that need current information beyond a training cutoff.

How does Grok 3 compare to GPT-4o?

Grok 3 is competitive with GPT-4o on most benchmarks with strong vision capabilities. Its main differentiator is real-time web and X/Twitter data access. Pricing is similar to GPT-4o.

Provider resources

Meta

Provider page Website Pricing Docs

xAI

Provider page Website Pricing Docs

Meta — Llama 4 & Muse Spark — the world's most widely deployed open-weight models

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.

xAI — Grok 3 — Elon Musk's frontier AI with real-time web access

Unique access to real-time X/Twitter data and web search — the only frontier model with native social media grounding.

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

xAI

▸Real-time web access and X/Twitter data integration
▸Grok 3 Mini is a cost-efficient reasoning model
▸Strong vision capabilities on Grok 3

Provider category context

Meta is a open source host, founded in 2023. xAI is a frontier lab, 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 xAI if you need real-time web access and x/twitter data integration. 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.