SEA-LION vs Llama
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
SEA-LION
Open-source LLM family for 11+ Southeast Asian languages
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Llama
Meta's open-weight LLM family — Llama 4 landed, Behemoth didn't
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| RECATOOLS Score | 8.2 / 10 | 8.3 / 10 |
| Capability | ||
| Value for money | ||
| Ease of use | ||
| ASEAN readiness | ||
| API quality | ||
| Pricing | Open Source | Open Source |
| Free tier | All weights free on Hugging Face; free API via playground.sea-lion.ai (10 req/min) | Free model weights for download and local use |
| Paid from | Open weights, free to self-host; hosted access via cloud providers | — |
| Has API | ✓ | ✓ |
| Open source | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free to use | ✓ | ✓ |
| Users | Hundreds to low-thousands of monthly Hugging Face downloads per variant | 10m+ downloads |
| Founded | 2023 | 2023 |
| Maker | AI Singapore (AISG) — national programme hosted by the National University of Singapore, funded by Singapore NRF | Meta Platforms |
| Verdict | SEA-LION is the most credible open-weight LLM built specifically for Southeast Asia -- nothing else in the open-source space covers this many regional languages this well. Backed by Singapore's National Research Foundati... |
Llama is still the backbone of the open-weight LLM ecosystem — Llama 2 and 3 built it, and Llama 4 (Scout and Maverick, shipped April 2025) kept it going, with a huge footprint on Hugging Face, Ollama, Together AI and Fi... |
| Full review → | Full review → |
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Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.