LG EXAONE vs LightOn (Paradigm)

A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.

LG EXAONE Korea's open vision-language AI — EXAONE 4.5 beats GPT-5-mini on STEM Visit LightOn (Paradigm) Sovereign on-prem GenAI platform for regulated European enterprises Visit
RECATOOLS Score 7.8 / 10 6.1 / 10
Capability 8.5 6
Value for money 8 6
Ease of use 6.5 6
ASEAN readiness 5.5 5
API quality 7 7
Pricing Freemium Enterprise
Free tier Weights free for research, academic, and educational use via Hugging Face (NC licence)
Paid from Commercial API via FriendliAI Serverless Endpoints (pay-per-token; contact FriendliAI for pricing)
Has API
Open source
Free to use
Users B2B-focused; deployed internally across LG product lines; research community access via Hugging Face
Founded 2020
Maker LG Group (LG AI Research)
Verdict

EXAONE 4.5, out in April 2026, moves LG AI Research's hybrid reasoning line into vision: a 33B model (32B language backbone plus a 1.2B vision encoder) that reads images alongside text and averages 77.3 across five STEM...

LightOn's pitch is straightforward: keep the model and the data on your own infrastructure. Paradigm bundles RAG, agents and access to curated open and in-house models behind one API, deployable on-prem or hybrid — the o...

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Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.