Llama 4 Scout vs Phi-4: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

Phi-4 is significantly cheaper at $0.07/$0.14 per million tokens vs $0.10/$0.30. Llama 4 Scout is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1230 vs 1130. Phi-4 is faster at 160 tokens/sec vs 110 tokens/sec. Llama 4 Scout ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1250 vs 1150. Llama 4 Scout offers a larger 10486K context window vs 16K.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureLlama 4 ScoutPhi-4
ProviderMetaMicrosoft
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.080$0.065
Output Price / 1M tokens$0.300$0.140
Context Window10.48576M16.384K
Max Output Tokens32,7684,096
Arena ELO1,2501,150
Coding ELO1,2301,130
TTFT (ms)200100
Tokens/sec110160
MultimodalYesNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesNo
VisionYesNo
When to Use Llama 4 Scout

Choose Llama 4 Scout when you need: 10m token context window, very affordable, open-source and self-hostable, good general performance. It excels at long-context, chatbots, cost-sensitive, open-source tasks. Its 10486K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

Strengths:

  • 10M token context window
  • Very affordable
  • Open-source and self-hostable
  • Good general performance

Best for:

long-contextchatbotscost-sensitiveopen-source
When to Use Phi-4

Choose Phi-4 when you need: ultra-low cost for a capable model, strong math for its size (14b params), very fast inference, can run on consumer hardware. It excels at cost-sensitive, edge-deployment, math, lightweight-tasks tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

Strengths:

  • Ultra-low cost for a capable model
  • Strong math for its size (14B params)
  • Very fast inference
  • Can run on consumer hardware

Best for:

cost-sensitiveedge-deploymentmathlightweight-tasks

Frequently Asked Questions

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