Meta released two new Llama 4 AI models on Saturday: Llama 4 Maverick and Llama 4 Scout. The two model launches follow shortly after OpenAI unlocked native image generation capabilities in ChatGPT, allowing the chatbot to generate more nuanced, accurate and photorealistic images that wowed users on social media and led to Studio Ghibli themed image generation trend. But with Meta also catching up with ChatGPT via its new model launches, how do the two AI models compare? Here’s a detailed comparison.
Meta vs ChatGPT: Which chatbot is better?
Benchmarks:
In theory, Meta states that its Llama Maverick model has an advantage over OpenAI’s GPT-4o model in coding, reasoning, multilingual, long-context, and image benchmarks. In LMarena leaderboard – as of writing this article, Llama 4 Maverick takes the lead over both GPT-4o and GPT-4.5 Preview and is ranked in the number two spot behind Gemini 2.5 Pro (Experimental) model. However, do note that these benchmarks are often fluid and the results change as a new update is rolled out.
While Meta claims that Llama 4 Maverick excels at creative writing and precise image generation realted tasks, there is no usually no conclusive way to prove this short of using both ChatGPT and new Meta AI models for similar queries over a long period of time.
Image generation:
While Meta made bold claims about Llama 4 models being natively multi-modal (ability to understand and respond to image prompts), much of those capabilities are only restricted to United States and in English for now with no news on when the feature will rollout to other countries.
Meanwhile, ChatGPT’s native image generator certainly seems to be currently the best free alternative available on the market with options to not just generate more contextually aware and photorealistic images but also edit images uploaded by users in different styles.
We also tried generating images by the current image generator in Meta AI and the results were disappointing to say the least, especially when compared to ChatGPT’s new capabilities.
Other important features:
While Meta’s new model is a huge upgrade over its predecessor, the AI chatbot by the same model does lack behind ChatGPT for a couple of reasons.
For starters, Meta does not have a reasoning model at and a Llama 4 Reasoning model is likely to be announced at the LlamaCon conference on 29 April. In case you aren’t aware, Reasoning models like OpenAI’s o1 and o3-Mini or DeepSeek R1 take slightly more time to analyze a query and aim to mimic human like thinking process in order to provide better answers to more complex questions especially in the field of maths, science and coding.
Llama 4 Maverick also isn’t exactly the top of the lineup model by Meta which will be Llama 4 Behemoth that is said to be released on a later date and will rival GPT-4.5 and Claude Sonnet 3.7.
Moreover, ChatGPT also recently got a Deep Research mode which allows the chatbot to conduct a rigorous search of the web to find what OpenAI claims are Research Assistant level answers. While the end results may not always match the company’s claims it is still an important tool to have in order to do a comprehensive search of the web as adoption by Perplexity AI, Grok and Gemini suggests.
Pricing and availability:
Llama 4 Maverick doesn’t currently seem to have any restrictions on usage or image generations for free users and can be used via Meta’s suite of apps like WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, which makes it much easier to use.
Meanwhile, OpenAI usually restricts the access to its latest model till a few messages after which it switches to the older model. There is also a restriction of up to 3 images per day currently for free users and there is a need to sign up on OpenAI website or app to start using the chatbot.
Llama 4 Behemoth, that outperforms GPT-4.5, Claude Sonnet 3.7, and Gemini 2.0 Pro on STEM-focused benchmarks such as MATH-500 and GPQA Diamond.
