MaLLaM vs ILMU (ILMUchat) vs SEA-LION vs Sahabat-AI
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
MaLLaM
Mesolitica's from-scratch Malaysian models, free to download but unlic...
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SEA-LION
AI Singapore's open-weight LLMs tuned for Southeast Asian languages
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| RECATOOLS Score | 6.5 / 10 | 6.8 / 10 | 8.2 / 10 | 6.6 / 10 |
| Capability | — | |||
| Value for money | — | |||
| Ease of use | — | |||
| ASEAN readiness | — | |||
| API quality | — | — | ||
| Pricing | Free | Freemium | Open Source | Open Source |
| Free tier | Weights free to download from Hugging Face, but no licence is declared on any MaLLaM model | Free: ILMUchat Basic (RM0), Claw Free one-time token allocation, RM20 early-access API credit | All weights free on Hugging Face; a free trial API key at 10 requests a minute for proofs of concept | Free open weights on Hugging Face (v2 under the Llama 3.1 Community License) and a free app download with in-app purchases |
| Paid from | — | ILMUchat Pro RM50/month, API Claw plans from RM25/seat/month, or pay-as-you-go per token | No paid tier: production runs on cloud partners at their own rates | Rp25,000 (Sahabat-AI Pro in-app purchase on iOS Indonesia, billing period not stated) |
| Has API | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Open source | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free to use | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Users | — | — | Hundreds to low-thousands of monthly Hugging Face downloads per variant | — |
| Founded | 2023 | — | 2023 | 2024 |
| Maker | Mesolitica | — | AI Singapore | Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison |
| Verdict | MaLLaM is a genuine from-scratch Malaysian model and a useful research artefact: base checkpoints from 1.1B to 5B parameters and instruction-tuned versions with a 20,480-token context, built on Malaysian text rather than... |
ILMU's core claim — that it handles rojak, the Malay/English/Chinese/dialect code-switching Malaysians actually speak — is the point of the product, and YTL is backing it with real infrastructure and deployments: ILMU po... |
SEA-LION is the open model family to start with for Southeast Asian language work: regularly updated, MIT-licensed in its newest releases, and evaluated on SEA-HELM, the regional benchmark its own team maintains. The Sep... |
Sahabat-AI is the most serious open model for Indonesian and its regional languages: the v2 weights cover Javanese, Sundanese, Balinese and Batak Toba alongside Bahasa Indonesia, publish their benchmark scores, and can b... |
| Full review → | Directory listing → | Full review → | Full review → |
Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.