ERNIE 4.5 Max vs Llama 4 Maverick: which model should you choose?
We compared ERNIE 4.5 Max and Llama 4 Maverick on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Llama 4 Maverick has the stronger average benchmark score; Llama 4 Maverick is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
ERNIE 4.5 Max
ERNIE 4.5 Max is a multimodal model from Baidu. It offers a 128,000-token context window, costs $14.41 per million input tokens and $53.71 per million output tokens, and averages 80.6 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $14.41 / 1M
- Output
- $53.71 / 1M
- Context
- 128,000
- Avg score
- 80.6
- Open weights
- No
Llama 4 Maverick
Llama 4 Maverick is a multimodal model from Meta AI. It offers a 200,000-token context window, costs $5.36 per million input tokens and $25.19 per million output tokens, and averages 81.6 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $5.36 / 1M
- Output
- $25.19 / 1M
- Context
- 200,000
- Avg score
- 81.6
- Open weights
- Yes
Specification comparison
| Spec | ERNIE 4.5 Max | Llama 4 Maverick | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $14.41 | $5.36 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $53.71 | $25.19 | B |
| Context window | 128,000 | 200,000 | B |
| Max output | 65,536 | 8,192 | A |
| Average score | 80.6 | 81.6 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1423.7 | 1447.0 | B |
| Open weights | No | Yes | B |
Benchmark comparison
ERNIE 4.5 Max wins 3, Llama 4 Maverick wins 9, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | ERNIE 4.5 Max | Llama 4 Maverick | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 80.8 | 84.7 | 3.9 | Llama 4 Maverick |
| GPQA Diamond | 76.4 | 76.8 | 0.4 | Llama 4 Maverick |
| SWE-bench Verified | 68.9 | 71.8 | 2.9 | Llama 4 Maverick |
| HumanEval | 87.7 | 87.3 | 0.4 | ERNIE 4.5 Max |
| MATH-500 | 84.2 | 82.7 | 1.5 | ERNIE 4.5 Max |
| AIME 2025 | 79.5 | 79.6 | 0.1 | Llama 4 Maverick |
| LiveCodeBench | 73.0 | 75.7 | 2.7 | Llama 4 Maverick |
| IFEval | 87.1 | 87.5 | 0.4 | Llama 4 Maverick |
| TruthfulQA | 83.6 | 82.6 | 1.0 | ERNIE 4.5 Max |
| HellaSwag | 87.7 | 88.2 | 0.5 | Llama 4 Maverick |
| MMMU | 78.1 | 80.4 | 2.3 | Llama 4 Maverick |
| Arena Elo | 1423.7 | 1447.0 | 23.3 | Llama 4 Maverick |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, ERNIE 4.5 Max costs about $24.23 per million tokens and Llama 4 Maverick costs about $10.32. Llama 4 Maverick is roughly 57% cheaper than ERNIE 4.5 Max. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Llama 4 Maverick has the larger context window at 200,000 tokens, compared with 128,000 for ERNIE 4.5 Max. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, ERNIE 4.5 Max wins 3, Llama 4 Maverick wins 9, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Llama 4 Maverick leads ERNIE 4.5 Max by 1.0 points (81.6 versus 80.6).
The price picture favours Llama 4 Maverick. The context picture favours Llama 4 Maverick. Those two dimensions often matter more than a few benchmark points once a model is good enough for the task.
If you need a single default, start with Llama 4 Maverick for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.
Choose ERNIE 4.5 Max if
- You need the larger 65,536-token output limit.
Choose Llama 4 Maverick if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- You need the larger 200,000-token context window.
- You need open weights for self-hosting or fine-tuning.
FAQ
Is ERNIE 4.5 Max better than Llama 4 Maverick?
On the index average, Llama 4 Maverick leads ERNIE 4.5 Max by 1.0 points (81.6 versus 80.6). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. ERNIE 4.5 Max wins 3 benchmarks, Llama 4 Maverick wins 9.
Which is cheaper, ERNIE 4.5 Max or Llama 4 Maverick?
Llama 4 Maverick is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $10.32 per million tokens, versus $24.23 for ERNIE 4.5 Max.
Which has the larger context window?
Llama 4 Maverick has the larger context window at 200,000 tokens. ERNIE 4.5 Max has 128,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
ERNIE 4.5 Max is proprietary; Llama 4 Maverick is open weights.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Llama 4 Maverick for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.