Llama 4 Scout vs North Mini Code

Meta · US  |  Cohere · Global · Updated June 2026

Quick verdict

Pick Llama 4 Scout for largest advertised context (10m) or open weights, single-gpu friendly. Pick North Mini Code for agentic software engineering, code generation, and terminal tasks or efficient sparse moe — 3b active of 30b, runs on a single h100.

Llama 4 Scout (Meta) and North Mini Code (Cohere) are two of the models people most often weigh against each other in 2026. Llama 4 Scout is the 10M-token open-weight giant — enormous on paper, but usable recall is far smaller. North Mini Code is cohere's first agentic coding model: an open-weight 30B/3B-active MoE built for real software-engineering and terminal tasks that runs on a single H100. Their biggest split is context window, and the breakdown below shows exactly how that plays out for your workload.

Key differences at a glance

Side-by-side specs

SpecLlama 4 ScoutNorth Mini Code
ProviderMeta (US) Cohere (Global)
ReleasedApril 2025 June 9, 2026
Context window10M (~15,000 pages) 256K (~384 pages)
Price (in/out)Open weight (self-host / free) Open weight (self-host / free)
Open weight?Yes — self-hostable Yes — self-hostable
Modalitiestext, image, code text, code
SWE-Bench VerifiedNot published 67.6%
MRCR v2 @ 1M15% Not published

Who wins what

Largest advertised context (10M)

Llama 4 Scout

A core design strength of Llama 4 Scout.

Open weights, single-GPU friendly

Llama 4 Scout

A core design strength of Llama 4 Scout.

Self-hosted, data-private deployment

Llama 4 Scout

A core design strength of Llama 4 Scout.

Agentic software engineering, code generation, and terminal tasks

North Mini Code

A core design strength of North Mini Code.

Efficient sparse MoE — 3B active of 30B, runs on a single H100

North Mini Code

A core design strength of North Mini Code.

High throughput (up to 2.8x Devstral Small 2) at low latency

North Mini Code

A core design strength of North Mini Code.

Largest single-prompt input

Llama 4 Scout

Its 10M window is about 39× larger, fitting roughly 15,000 pages in one prompt.

Which should you pick?

Someone analysing very long documents or codebases

Llama 4 Scout

Larger 10M window fits more in one prompt.

Anyone whose priority is largest advertised context (10m)

Llama 4 Scout

It is specifically built for that.

Anyone whose priority is agentic software engineering, code generation, and terminal tasks

North Mini Code

That is its strongest area.

Llama 4 Scout: where it fits

The 10M-token open-weight giant — enormous on paper, but usable recall is far smaller. Released April 2025 by Meta, it is built for largest advertised context (10M), open weights, single-GPU friendly, self-hosted, data-private deployment, and retrieval over very long inputs.

Its trade-offs are real: effective recall degrades far below 10M, and ~15% on long-context multi-needle reasoning. As an open-weight model, its running cost is your own hardware rather than a per-token fee.

North Mini Code: where it fits

Cohere's first agentic coding model: an open-weight 30B/3B-active MoE built for real software-engineering and terminal tasks that runs on a single H100. Released June 9, 2026 by Cohere, it is built for agentic software engineering, code generation, and terminal tasks, efficient sparse MoE — 3B active of 30B, runs on a single H100, high throughput (up to 2.8x Devstral Small 2) at low latency, and fully open weights under Apache 2.0 with fp8 and 4-bit builds.

Its trade-offs: text-only and coding-specialized — not multimodal or general-purpose, and 256K context and modest general-intelligence index trail frontier models. As an open-weight model, its running cost is your own hardware rather than a per-token fee.

The bottom line for this matchup

Llama 4 Scout and North Mini Code overlap enough that the right pick depends on your specific job. Llama 4 Scout holds the larger context; and each leads in its own area — Llama 4 Scout for largest advertised context (10m), North Mini Code for agentic software engineering, code generation, and terminal tasks. Rather than crowning one, run the same hard task through both once and let the results decide.

Want both Llama 4 Scout and North Mini Code without two subscriptions? LumiChats gives you these plus 40+ models under one ₹69/day pass (about $1/day) — draft with one, cross-check with the other.

See pricing

Frequently asked questions

Is Llama 4 Scout or North Mini Code better for coding?

Public SWE-Bench figures are not available for Llama 4 Scout, so the honest test is your own repository — run an identical real bug through both. By design, Llama 4 Scout leans toward largest advertised context (10m) while North Mini Code leans toward agentic software engineering, code generation, and terminal tasks, and that positioning usually predicts which feels better on your codebase.

Which is cheaper, Llama 4 Scout or North Mini Code?

They are priced almost identically, so cost will not decide between them.

Which has the bigger context window?

Llama 4 Scout — 10M vs 256K, about 39× larger. Useful only if the model actually reasons over the full window, which not all do.

Can I use both Llama 4 Scout and North Mini Code together?

Yes — a multi-model platform like LumiChats gives you Llama 4 Scout, North Mini Code and 40+ others under one ₹69/day pass (about $1/day), so you can draft with one and cross-check with the other instead of buying two subscriptions.

Which is newer, Llama 4 Scout or North Mini Code?

North Mini Code — released June 9, 2026, about 14 months after Llama 4 Scout.

Related comparisons

Specifications and benchmarks reflect publicly reported figures as of June 2026 and may change as providers release updates. Always verify on your own workload.