Llama Guard 4 12B
About this model
Llama Guard 4 12B is an AI model from Meta, made available through the API on April 30, 2025. It can read up to 163,840 tokens in one request, roughly 307 pages of text, and write up to 16,384 tokens in a single answer. Besides text, it accepts images as input.
Through the API it costs $0.18 per million input tokens and $0.18 per million output tokens. Its pricing puts it among the more affordable models we track, which makes it a good fit for high-volume tasks.
Its weights are openly published (meta-llama/Llama-Guard-4-12B), so it can also be downloaded and run on your own hardware.
Quality scores
Rankings →Not rated yet. Independent test results usually appear a few weeks after a model is released.
Where to use it
Companies that serve this model through an API: 1. Prices per million tokens, cheapest first.
Availability and prices come from OpenRouter’s public API and are refreshed daily. Uptime is the share of successful requests over the last 24 hours. Some providers run a compressed version of open models (fp8, int4), which is cheaper but can be slightly less accurate.
Use it in your code
Call Llama Guard 4 12B through OpenRouter’s OpenAI-compatible API: create a key on openrouter.ai, then run one of these examples.
curl https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"model": "meta-llama/llama-guard-4-12b", "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello! What can you do?"}]}'import os
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(base_url="https://openrouter.ai/api/v1", api_key=os.environ["OPENROUTER_API_KEY"])
reply = client.chat.completions.create(
model="meta-llama/llama-guard-4-12b",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello! What can you do?"}],
)
print(reply.choices[0].message.content)import OpenAI from "openai";
const client = new OpenAI({ baseURL: "https://openrouter.ai/api/v1", apiKey: process.env.OPENROUTER_API_KEY });
const reply = await client.chat.completions.create({
model: "meta-llama/llama-guard-4-12b",
messages: [{ role: "user", content: "Hello! What can you do?" }],
});
console.log(reply.choices[0].message.content);The same code works with every model on this site: only the model ID changes. Many labs also offer their own API and SDK.
What it costs in practice
- 1,000 chat replies$0.144
- Summarise a 100-page document$0.0092
- An app with 10,000 requests a day for a month$75.60
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News about Meta
See all →Frequently asked questions
- How much does Llama Guard 4 12B cost?
- Llama Guard 4 12B costs $0.18 per million input tokens and $0.18 per million output tokens through the API. For example, 1,000 chat replies of about 500 tokens in and 300 out cost around $0.144.
- What is the context window of Llama Guard 4 12B?
- Llama Guard 4 12B can read up to 163,840 tokens in one request, about 307 pages of text. It can write up to 16,384 tokens in a single answer.
- Is Llama Guard 4 12B open source?
- Yes. Its weights are published (meta-llama/Llama-Guard-4-12B), so you can download it and run it on your own hardware, or use it through one of 1 API providers.
- Who makes Llama Guard 4 12B?
- Llama Guard 4 12B is made by Meta. It became available through the API on April 30, 2025.
- Can Llama Guard 4 12B read images?
- Yes. Besides text, it accepts images as input.
- What are the alternatives to Llama Guard 4 12B?
- Models with a similar price from other companies include Hy3 preview, Qwen3 VL 8B Thinking and GPT-5.6 Luna Pro. You can compare them side by side on this page.