PLaMo (Preferred Networks)
PFN's from-scratch Japanese LLM, now in Japan's government AI stack
Overview
PLaMo is Preferred Networks' Japanese LLM family: PLaMo 3.0 Prime (reasoning, 256K context) via API from ¥60 per million input tokens, PLaMo Translate used in Japan's government, PLaMo Lite for edge devices, and open-weight models. A free PLaMo Chat demo is limited to Japanese residents.
Pricing
Pricing shown for reference only. These figures reflect RECATOOLS research as of 1 Oct 2026 and may be out of date or incomplete. This is not financial or purchasing advice — always confirm the current price on the provider’s official website before making any decision.
- PLaMo models in a chat interface
- Zero data retention
- Higher rate limits
- Email support
- ~10M tokens of credit for new sign-ups
- Full reasoning content
- Custom PLaMo Guardrail policy
- Priority processing, dedicated support
- Snowflake, Sakura AI Engine, SageMaker
- PLaMo Lite edge model
- Unlimited browser translation
- 1M text characters, 20 files
- 5M text characters, 80 files
- Unlimited glossaries
What you can produce with PLaMo (Preferred Networks)
- PLaMo 3.0 Prime API with reasoning and 256K context
- PLaMo Lite for edge deployment
- PLaMo Translate, used in Japan's government AI environment
- Vision-language and finance-tuned PLaMo variants
- On-premises delivery and availability on Bedrock, SageMaker, Snowflake and Sakura
- Open-weight models on Hugging Face (non-commercial and community licences)
- vLLM inference plugin for PLaMo 3
PLaMo is the most government-embedded of Japan's domestic LLMs: PLaMo Translate runs in the national government's AI environment, around 800 municipalities use services built on it, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is set to invest ¥10 billion in PFN. PLaMo 3.0 Prime, launched in June 2026, adds reasoning and a 256K context, and API pricing has dropped to ¥60 per million input tokens with zero data retention — far cheaper than the ¥300 older reviews quote. It is built for Japanese text and Japanese compliance needs, with on-premises options and availability on AWS, Snowflake and Sakura. Its free chat demo is limited to Japan, and benchmarks are PFN's own. A natural choice for Japanese organisations that need a domestic model; elsewhere, global models will usually serve better.
What we found
PLaMo is the Japanese large language model family built by Preferred Networks (PFN), the Tokyo AI company founded in 2014 and now led by chief executive Daisuke Okanohara. The current flagship, PLaMo 3.0 Prime, launched on 22 June 2026 with reasoning and non-reasoning modes, a 256,000-token context window and PFN's own Japanese tokenizer; it builds on a model developed in joint research with Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology. PFN calls it the first Japanese from-scratch model with reasoning. Earlier versions, up to 2.2 Prime, were retired from the API on 30 September 2026. Around it sit PLaMo Lite for edge devices, a vision-language model, a finance-tuned model, PLaMo Translate and open-weight releases on Hugging Face under non-commercial or community licences, the latter free only for organisations under ¥1 billion in revenue.
Its government footprint is real: PLaMo Translate runs in the Japanese government's Gennai AI environment, PLaMo 2.0 Prime was selected for the government AI trial, and around 800 municipalities use services built on it. PFN merged its LLM subsidiary, Preferred Elements, back into the parent in 2025, and in September 2026 announced a capital and business alliance under which Mitsubishi Heavy Industries plans to invest ¥10 billion, subject to shareholder approval.
API pricing fell sharply in 2025. The Standard plan costs ¥60 per million input tokens and ¥250 per million output, with zero data retention and pay-as-you-go billing; new sign-ups receive credit worth about ten million tokens for a month. A Provider plan adds reasoning traces, configurable guardrails and priority processing, and on-premises delivery runs from model files to complete servers; the models are also on Amazon Bedrock Marketplace, SageMaker, Snowflake and Sakura AI Engine. PFN benchmarks PLaMo favourably against similar-sized models on its own tests. PLaMo Chat is a free demo limited to Japanese residents and companies, and PLaMo Translate has a free plan with paid tiers from ¥980 a month. It is built for Japanese-language and Japanese-government work rather than Southeast Asian use.
Compiled by RECATOOLS from public sources: vendor documentation and pricing, code repositories and published reporting.
About this listing
This entry was compiled from publicly available data including PLaMo (Preferred Networks)'s official website, press releases, documentation, and reputable third-party publications. RECATOOLS is not affiliated with PLaMo (Preferred Networks) unless explicitly stated.
Third-party AI tools update their pricing, features, availability, and policies frequently. Information here may be outdated by the time you read this — we make reasonable efforts to keep listings current, but cannot guarantee absolute accuracy.
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