Which is cheaper, Llama 4 Maverick or Claude 4.6 Sonnet?

Llama 4 Maverick is cheaper at the input + output rate combined: $2.00 versus $18.00 per million tokens.

Which has higher quality, Llama 4 Maverick or Claude 4.6 Sonnet?

Claude 4.6 Sonnet has the higher AA Intelligence Index score: 89 versus 80.

Can I switch between Llama 4 Maverick and Claude 4.6 Sonnet via one API?

Both Llama 4 Maverick and Claude 4.6 Sonnet are accessible through OpenRouter's unified gateway, which lets you switch models with one API key. Phase 2 of AIpricly will add scenario-routed automatic primary + fallback chains.

Llama 4 Maverick vs Claude 4.6 Sonnet

Side-by-side pricing, capabilities, real-world cost across common scenarios, and our editorial pick.

Add a modelUp to 4 models can be compared

all prices in USD per 1M tokens

OVERALL WINNER

Llama 4 Maverick

Meta · released 2026-01-25

Quality (AA Index)80

Input price$0.50

Output price$1.50

Context256K

Throughput220 tok/s

P50 latency0.5s

View full pricing

Claude 4.6 Sonnet

Anthropic · released 2026-04-08

Quality (AA Index)89

Input price$3.00

Output price$15.00

Context200K

Throughput85 tok/s

P50 latency1.1s

View full pricing

Try Llama 4 Maverick on OpenRouter Try Claude 4.6 Sonnet on OpenRouter

Links open in a new tab via our OpenRouter referral. Affiliate disclosure

Head-to-head specs

Green column = winner per metric

Metric	Llama 4 Maverick	Claude 4.6 Sonnet	Verdict
Input price /1M tokens	$0.50	$3.00	Llama 4 Maverick −83%
Output price /1M tokens	$1.50	$15.00	Llama 4 Maverick −90%
Context window max input length	256K	200K	Llama 4 Maverick +1.3×
AA Quality AA Intelligence Index (0–100)	80	89	Claude 4.6 Sonnet +9pt
Arena Elo LMArena human-pref Elo (800–2000)	—	—	Tied
Throughput tokens per second	220	85	Llama 4 Maverick +159%
P50 latency first token	0.5s	1.1s	Llama 4 Maverick −55%
Vision multimodal			Tied
Function calling tool use			Tied
Reasoning mode chain-of-thought	—

Monthly cost across common scenarios

Default usage assumptions

Scenario	Llama 4 Maverick	Claude 4.6 Sonnet
customer support 1000K req · 600/180 tok	$570	$4.5K
chat with docs 300K req · 4000/300 tok	$735	$5.0K
code generation 500K req · 2000/500 tok	$875	$6.8K
voice assistant 600K req · 800/200 tok	$420	$3.2K

Our pick

For most workloads, choose Llama 4 Maverick.

83% cheaper input price, which compounds at scale
1.3× the context window — better for long documents and agents
159% faster throughput — matters for streaming UX and voice agents

Best open-weight alternative for self-hosted deployments. Quality lags closed-source frontier but cost-per-token via inference providers is the lowest in the table.

Choose Claude 4.6 Sonnet instead if: Strongest non-OpenAI option for nuanced writing and code review; pricier than DeepSeek but more reliable refusal patterns for regulated industries.

Read our deep analysis

Why pick? Use both with smart routing

Phase 2 · gateway with fallback chain

Set Llama 4 Maverick as primary, Claude 4.6 Sonnet as fallback. One key, one bill, automatic failover when Llama 4 Maverick errors.

PHASE 2 PREVIEW · gateway not live yetThis endpoint does not exist yet. The gateway is in Phase 2 — what you see below is a design preview of the planned interface, not a live API. We will email subscribers when it launches.

Preview the planned API call

$ curl https://api.aipricly.com/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AIPC_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "routing": {
      "primary": "meta/llama-4-maverick",
      "fallback": ["anthropic/claude-4-6-sonnet"]
    },
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "..."}]
  }'