Side-by-side comparison of Grok-2 (xAI · USA) and SmolLM3 3B (Hugging Face · USA) for self-hosted deployment of the open-weight model. Grok-2 is rated conditional; SmolLM3 3B is EU-ready. They part ways on licence: Grok-2 is "Grok 2 Community", SmolLM3 3B is "Apache 2.0".
| Field | ||
|---|---|---|
| Summary | ||
| Verdict | Conditional xAI's first open-weights release. Commercial use allowed under the Grok 2 Community License with xAI's Acceptable Use Policy. Notable restriction: weights cannot be used to train other models (distillation ban). 500GB model, needs 8 GPUs with 40GB+. | EU-ready Fully open small model: Apache 2.0 weights, training data published, engineering blueprint public. 6 native languages (EN/FR/ES/DE/IT/PT) covers major EU markets. 128K context via YARN. Strong default for edge or on-prem EU deployments where transparency matters. |
| Last reviewed | 2026-04-16 | 2026-04-16 |
| Open-weight | ||
| Licence | Grok 2 Community | Apache 2.0 |
| Commercial use | Yes (w/ AUP) | Yes |
| Training data | Undisclosed | Disclosed |
| Origin | USA | USA |
| Performance & pricing? | ||
| Quality index | 14/100 | — |
| Speed | — | — |
| Blended price | — | — |
| Context window | — | — |
| Evidence | ||
| Sources | ||
No overlapping sources between the two entries.