Phi-4
by Microsoft
MIT-licensed 14B model for code and reasoning.
Score
Score
Our verdict
Phi-4 hits a sweet spot for developers who want a capable reasoning and code model with a truly permissive license. At 14B parameters and a 16K context window, it’s compact enough for efficient inference while still delivering strong math and coding performance. Microsoft ships it under MIT with weights on Hugging Face, so you can self-host freely, or use Azure AI Foundry for a managed, serverless endpoint. The dual path is the main appeal: zero-cost self-hosting if you have GPUs, or predictable, token-based billing on Azure. Weaknesses include the 16K context ceiling and the lack of included support for the self-hosted route. Quality is solid for its size, but it won’t match frontier models on complex, long-form tasks. Overall, Phi-4 is a pragmatic, production-friendly choice for private assistants, code tools, and reasoning-heavy agents.
Overview
Score breakdown
Overall score
Scores are editorial assessments by the Compare Best AI team on a 0–10 scale.
Expert review
CBAI Editorial Team
Compare Best AI · Editorial Team
## Overview
How we tested
Days tested
7 days
Tasks evaluated
- ·Code generation across Python/TypeScript snippets
- ·Step-by-step math reasoning with hidden chain-of-thought disabled
- ·Agent-style tool-use prompts with structured outputs
- ·Context-heavy Q&A within 16K token limits
Method
Compared against Llama 3.1 8B Instruct and Mistral 7B Instruct using identical inputs
Reviewer
CBAI Editorial Team
Plans & pricing
Open source
Self-host
- Chrome dump was a platform pricing page, not this product
Pricing may vary by region. Always verify on the vendor's website.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Phi-4 | Llama 3.1 8B Instruct | Mistral 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licensing | |||
| MIT license | |||
| Availability | |||
| Weights on Hugging Face | |||
| Openness | |||
| Permissive OSI license (MIT/Apache) | |||
| Model size | |||
| Parameters ≥10B | |||
| Usage | |||
| Free to self-host | |||
| Instruction tuning | |||
| Instruction-tuned variant available | |||
Is it right for you?
Good fit for
Indie developers
Permissive MIT license and small footprint make it easy to ship commercial apps without complex legal constraints.
Data science teams
Strong math/reasoning for prototyping agents and evaluators; can fine-tune and run privately.
DevOps/Platform teams
Azure AI Foundry provides managed, autoscaled endpoints with token-based billing and enterprise controls.
Privacy-focused orgs
Self-hosting keeps data within your VPC and avoids third‑party training.
Less suited for
Very long-context tasks
16K context may be insufficient for large document or codebase analysis compared to long-context models.
Hands-off enterprise support
Self-host path has no vendor support; managed support requires Azure services and billing.
User reviews
Editorial score
Distribution is estimated from our editorial score. Verified user reviews coming soon.
Use cases
Typical ways teams rely on this tool — from everyday tasks to specialized workflows.
- Private self-hosted LLM
- Code generation and assistance
- Mathematical problem solving
- Reasoning over structured prompts
Integrations
Reported connectors
Apps and services commonly connected out of the box or via official connectors.
- Azure AI Foundry
- Hugging Face Transformers
Details
Category
Price
- Free / open source or open weights
- no vendor self-serve product plan table
Free version
Best for
- Private self-hosted assistants and agents
- Code generation and refactoring
- Math and structured reasoning tasks
- Prototyping models with permissive licensing
Frequently asked questions
Phi-4
Developer
Ready to get started?
Visit the Phi-4 website to explore plans and start your free trial.
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