Llama is open-source and free to host yourself; ChatGPT is easier to use and more capable out of the box.

Llama vs ChatGPT

Our pick

Llama wins

Fully free — no card required.

Try Llama free →

Llama

by Meta

Llama is Meta's family of open-weight language models — from Llama 3.1 8B to Llama 3.3 70B. Free to download, fine-tune, and deploy without API costs. Powers hundreds of apps, local AI tools, and enterprise deployments. Llama 3.1 405B is competitive with GPT-4 on many benchmarks.

Free
VS

ChatGPT

by OpenAI

OpenAI's flagship assistant. Strong at general reasoning, writing, code. GPT-4o free, GPT-5 + o3 on Plus ($20/mo).

Free / $20+

Head-to-head

Feature Llama ChatGPT
VendorMetaOpenAI
CategoryConversational AIConversational AI
Free tierYesYes
Starting priceFreeFree / $20/mo
Strengthsfully open-source, run locally (no data sent to Meta), customisable and fine-tuneablewidest feature set, huge plugin/GPT ecosystem, voice mode
Weaknessesrequires technical setup to self-host, slower than API services without GPUrate-limited on free tier, no transparent sources

Not sure yet?