Which is cheaper, Llama 4 Maverick or Claude Haiku 4.5?

Llama 4 Maverick is cheaper at the input + output rate combined: $2.00 versus $6.00 per million tokens.

Which has higher quality, Llama 4 Maverick or Claude Haiku 4.5?

Llama 4 Maverick has the higher AA Intelligence Index score: 80 versus 79.

Can I switch between Llama 4 Maverick and Claude Haiku 4.5 via one API?

Both Llama 4 Maverick and Claude Haiku 4.5 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 Haiku 4.5

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 Haiku 4.5

Anthropic · released 2026-04-08

Quality (AA Index)79

Input price$1.00

Output price$5.00

Context200K

Throughput250 tok/s

P50 latency0.4s

View full pricing

Try Llama 4 Maverick on OpenRouter Try Claude Haiku 4.5 on OpenRouter

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Head-to-head specs

Green column = winner per metric

Metric	Llama 4 Maverick	Claude Haiku 4.5	Verdict
Input price /1M tokens	$0.50	$1.00	Llama 4 Maverick −50%
Output price /1M tokens	$1.50	$5.00	Llama 4 Maverick −70%
Context window max input length	256K	200K	Llama 4 Maverick +1.3×
AA Quality AA Intelligence Index (0–100)	80	79	Llama 4 Maverick +1pt
Arena Elo LMArena human-pref Elo (800–2000)	—	—	Tied
Throughput tokens per second	220	250	Claude Haiku 4.5 +14%
P50 latency first token	0.5s	0.4s	Claude Haiku 4.5 −20%
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 Haiku 4.5
customer support 1000K req · 600/180 tok	$570	$1.5K
chat with docs 300K req · 4000/300 tok	$735	$1.6K
code generation 500K req · 2000/500 tok	$875	$2.3K
voice assistant 600K req · 800/200 tok	$420	$1.1K

Our pick

For most workloads, choose Llama 4 Maverick.

50% cheaper input price, which compounds at scale
1.3× the context window — better for long documents and 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 Haiku 4.5 instead if: Anthropic’s economy tier — gentler tone, stronger safety patterns than mainstream tiny models. Choose when output voice matters more than raw IQ.

Read our deep analysis

The Cheapest LLM API for Production in 2026

Why pick? Use both with smart routing

Phase 2 · gateway with fallback chain

Set Llama 4 Maverick as primary, Claude Haiku 4.5 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-haiku-4-5"]
    },
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "..."}]
  }'