Which is cheaper, Llama 4 Maverick or Gemini 2.5 Flash?

Llama 4 Maverick is cheaper at the input + output rate combined: $2.00 versus $2.80 per million tokens.

Which has higher quality, Llama 4 Maverick or Gemini 2.5 Flash?

Llama 4 Maverick has the higher AA Intelligence Index score: 80 versus 78.

Can I switch between Llama 4 Maverick and Gemini 2.5 Flash via one API?

Both Llama 4 Maverick and Gemini 2.5 Flash 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 Gemini 2.5 Flash

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

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

OVERALL WINNER

Gemini 2.5 Flash

Google · released 2025-09-01

Quality (AA Index)78

Input price$0.30

Output price$2.50

Context1M

Throughput320 tok/s

P50 latency0.3s

View full pricing

Try Llama 4 Maverick on OpenRouter Try Gemini 2.5 Flash on OpenRouter

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Head-to-head specs

Green column = winner per metric

Metric	Llama 4 Maverick	Gemini 2.5 Flash	Verdict
Input price /1M tokens	$0.50	$0.30	Gemini 2.5 Flash −40%
Output price /1M tokens	$1.50	$2.50	Llama 4 Maverick −40%
Context window max input length	256K	1M	Gemini 2.5 Flash +3.9×
AA Quality AA Intelligence Index (0–100)	80	78	Llama 4 Maverick +2pt
Arena Elo LMArena human-pref Elo (800–2000)	—	—	Tied
Throughput tokens per second	220	320	Gemini 2.5 Flash +45%
P50 latency first token	0.5s	0.3s	Gemini 2.5 Flash −40%
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	Gemini 2.5 Flash
customer support 1000K req · 600/180 tok	$570	$630
chat with docs 300K req · 4000/300 tok	$735	$585
code generation 500K req · 2000/500 tok	$875	$925
voice assistant 600K req · 800/200 tok	$420	$444

Our pick

For most workloads, choose Gemini 2.5 Flash.

40% cheaper input price, which compounds at scale
3.9× the context window — better for long documents and agents
45% faster throughput — matters for streaming UX and voice agents

The price-performance benchmark for vision tasks. Strong multimodal, weak on deep reasoning. Pair as a fast first hop ahead of a smarter fallback.

Choose Llama 4 Maverick instead if: 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.

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 Gemini 2.5 Flash as primary, Llama 4 Maverick as fallback. One key, one bill, automatic failover when Gemini 2.5 Flash 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": "google/gemini-2-5-flash",
      "fallback": ["meta/llama-4-maverick"]
    },
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "..."}]
  }'