Meta Llama Release Timeline: From Llama 1 to Llama 4

Here's an overview of the current status and release schedule for Meta's open-source LLM, the Llama series.

Unlike Google Gemini or OpenAI GPT, Llama is an open-weights model, so there's no concept of a complete service shutdown where "the server is turned off on a specific date" like Google does. Once you download it, you can use it permanently — but ecosystem support and availability from cloud API providers naturally determine when a model is phased out.

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Meta Llama Series Release Timeline (2023-2026)

1. Llama 4 Series (Latest Generation - 2025-2026)

• Llama 4 (Scout & Maverick): Released April 2025.

• Meta's latest flagship model, introducing MoE (Mixture-of-Experts) architecture and equipped with native multimodal capabilities (vision/audio, etc.), it currently leads the open-source ecosystem as of 2026.

2. Llama 3 Series (Transitional Period & Lightweight Maturity - 2024)

• Llama 3.3: Released December 2024. (Focused on a single 70B model, a major improvement over 3.1)

• Llama 3.2: Released October 2024. (Added Vision and released on-device lightweight models: 1B/3B)

• Llama 3.1: Released July 2024. (Including the massive 405B model, the definitive version of Llama 3)

• Llama 3 (Base): Released April 2024. (Focused on 8B and 70B)

• Current Status: Llama 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3 are still widely served through numerous developer environments and API providers (Groq, Together AI, AWS, etc.).

3. Llama 1 & Llama 2 (Legacy Models - 2023)

• Llama 2: Released July 2023. (The first official version permitting commercial use)

• Llama 1: Released February 2023. (Released only for research, but became famous due to a leak)

• Current Status (Effectively End-of-Life): Official API clouds (AWS Bedrock, Azure, etc.) and major hosting services have mostly discontinued hosting of Llama 1 and 2, which have lower performance efficiency relative to their parameter count. (Local download and self-hosting are still possible.)

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Characteristics of "Deprecation" in the Llama Ecosystem

Unlike API-based Google (Gemini), Llama lets developers own the model weights.

1. Permanent Ownership: Even if Meta announces "Llama 2 is being discontinued as of tomorrow," models you've already downloaded can run on your PC or company server forever.

2. API Provider Deprecation: If you're using API services (Groq, AWS, Azure, etc.) rather than self-hosting, the practical 'end of service' occurs when those providers stop routing to older Llama models to optimize service costs.