How to use Meta Llama4 for free?

OpenRouter, HuggingFace, Llama.com, and Meta.ai

Last night, Meta dropped a new series of Llama models called Llama 4, which is completely open-sourced. And you know what open source means?

free access to the state-of-the-art models for everyone

https://medium.com/media/57c39382c7de7326b0dd88c1cbdf766f/href

but being open-source, there is a big limitation with Llama 4 — its huge size.

The smallest model of the series, Llama 4 Scout, has 109 billion parameters, which is quite huge and can’t be run on a local system.

Read more about the models here:

Meta Llama4 released: Beats DeepSeek v3, Gemini 2.0

No worries even if you don’t have any GPU, we have found out ways by which you can even access the model for free from UI. If you have enough GPU, you can download the weights and everything covered in this blog.

https://medium.com/media/b2acbb3d03dd5f794a1056f0bf9f7573/href

1. Access Llama 4 Directly on Meta. ai

The simplest way to try Llama 4 is through Meta’s official AI platform.

Steps:

1. Visit Meta.ai
2. Start chatting — the model running here is already updated to Llama 4.
3. To confirm, ask: “Which model are you? Llama 3 or Llama 4?”

• It should respond: “I am built on Llama 4.”

✅ Pros: No sign-up required, instant access.
❌ Cons: Limited customization, no API access.

If you just wish to try out Llama 4, go straight away to Meta.ai.

https://medium.com/media/febe615a3a9e6ca78ee90a9b73b90f63/href

2. Download Model Weights from Llama.com

If you want to experiment with the raw model weights, Meta provides them for free.

Steps:

1. Go to Llama.com
2. Fill out a request form to gain access.

3. Once approved, you can download:

• Llama 4 Scout
• Llama 4 Maverick (Behemoth may be released later)

✅ Pros: Full model access for local/cloud deployment.
❌ Cons: Requires approval, not a ready-to-use chat interface.

This is a good option if you are a developer and you want to test out the model in your local system.

3. Use OpenRouter for Free Chat & API Access

OpenRouter.ai offers free API access to Llama 4 models.

Steps:

1. Visit OpenRouter.ai
2. Sign up (free).
3. Look for Llama 4 Maverick (free) and Llama 4 Scout(free) in the model list.
4. Start chatting or get a free API key for integration.

✅ Pros: Free API, no waiting list.
❌ Cons: Rate limits may apply.

Provides both ChatUI and API

4. Access Llama 4 on HuggingFace

Everyone’s favorite? Hugging Face is always the answer.

For developers, Hugging Face hosts Llama4 models with different precision levels (FP8, etc.).

Steps:

1. Go to Hugging Face’s Llama 4 page
2. Fill out Meta’s gated access form (quick approval).
3. Use the Hugging Face Inference API or download weights.

✅ Pros: Full model flexibility, supports fine-tuning.
❌ Cons: Requires approval, more technical setup.

Final Thoughts

While Llama 4 Behemoth (400B) isn’t widely available yet, you can already test Scout and Maverick for free via:
✔ Meta.ai (easiest)
✔ OpenRouter.ai (best for API)
✔ Llama.com (for weights)
✔ Hugging Face (for developers)

Have you tried Llama 4 yet?

How to use Meta Llama4 for free? was originally published in Data Science in Your Pocket on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.