AI21

Jamba 1.5 Large

Reviewed by the GetInfoUs research teamLast reviewed: October 2026Editorial policy
Hybrid SSM-Transformer TitanOfficial Source Verified ↗
42
Intelligence Index

The world's leading hybrid Mamba-Transformer model, combining state space efficiency with attention power to deliver 256K context at unbeatable speeds.

Technical Specifications

Provider
AI21
Category
flagship
Release Date
2024-08
Knowledge Cutoff
March 2024
Architecture
Hybrid SSM-Transformer (Mamba + Transformer MoE)
Parameters
398B (94B active)
Context Window
256K tokens
Max Output
4K tokens
Cached Input Price
$0.5 / 1M tokens
Batch API Discount
50% off async batch
Consumer Subscription
Free / Self-Hosted
Reasoning Mode
No (Standard)
Reasoning Effort Control
Fixed
Tool Calling
Yes
Structured Outputs
Yes
Open Weights
Yes (Open Source / Self-Hostable)
Input Modalities
text
Output Modalities
text
Official Documentation
Visit Official Docs ↗

Data Privacy, Licensing & Deployment Governance

API Data Training Policy
100% Isolated when self-hosted on private GPUs or VPC
Model License & Commercial Rights
Open-Weights Research & Commercial License
Deployment & Cloud Availability
Self-Hosted GPU (vLLM / Ollama), Private VPC, or Managed Serverless API
Output Ownership
Full commercial ownership of generated outputs

Official Provider Release Intelligence, API Quotas & Agentic Specs

Compare Multi-Models Side-by-Side →
Official API Model ID (SDK String)
jamba-1-5-large
Supported SDK & API Protocol
OpenAI-Compatible REST / vLLM / SGLang / HuggingFace TGI
Lifecycle & Deprecation Status
Legacy Stable (Upgrade path available in AI21 lineup)
Production Rate Limits (RPM & TPM)
Unlimited (Hardware-bound on self-hosted GPU) / 10,000 RPM Cloud · Unlimited local throughput / 10M+ TPM Managed Cloud
Long-Context Pricing Tier (>128K / >200K)
Flat rate ($2/1M in) across full 256K window
Prompt Cache Write & TTL Policy
Cached input at $0.5/1M tokens
Computer Use & Browser GUI Agent
API / CLI Tool-Use & DOM Agent ready (no raw pixel desktop click loop)
MCP & Parallel Tool Calling
Native MCP Client/Server ready · Parallel function calling · 100% Strict JSON Schema
Web Search Grounding & Code Sandbox
Supported via external Tavily/Exa Search & E2B/Docker Sandbox tools
Fine-Tuning & Distillation Support
Full Weights SFT, LoRA, QLoRA, DPO & GRPO RL (Unsloth / Axolotl / Llama-Factory)
Multimodal Tokenization Billing
Text BPE (~4 chars/token)
Weights Precision & Quantization
BF16 / FP16, FP8 Dynamic, INT4 AWQ / GPTQ, GGUF (Q4_K_M / Q8_0)
Minimum GPU VRAM Requirement
247 GB VRAM (4-bit Quantized) · 856 GB VRAM (Native BF16)
Supported Inference Engines
vLLM, SGLang, Ollama, llama.cpp, TensorRT-LLM, HuggingFace TGI
System Card & Safety Framework
Open-Weights System Card + Customizable Guardrail Layer (Llama Guard / ShieldGemma)
Enterprise Compliance (SOC2 / HIPAA / ZDR)
100% Air-Gapped On-Premises / Private VPC · Full HIPAA, GDPR & SOC2 Control
Engineering & Pricing Workbench

Jamba 1.5 Large Cost, Context, Hardware & API Integration

500 / day
4,000 tok
1,000 tok
Conversation Depth (History Re-billing):1 Turn (Single-Shot)
50%
Estimated Monthly API Cost (30 Days)
$195.00$240.00
Monthly Savings: $45.00 (Caching/Batch)
Subscription ($20/mo) vs API

For single-user chat, a $20/mo subscription caps your bill below this API volume.

Break-even point: ~51 requests/day equals $20/month.

Same Monthly Workload Cost Across Popular Reference Models

Jamba 1.5 Large (Active)
$195.00
/ month
Gemini 2.5 Flash
$18.00
/ month
DeepSeek V3
$32.70
/ month
GPT-4o
$300.00
/ month
Claude 3.7 Sonnet
$405.00
/ month

Live Prompt Paste Tokenizer & Cost Counter

Paste real system instructions, JSON schemas, or code to measure BPE token counts across tokenizers.

Chars / Words
175 / 24
OpenAI o200k
~46 tok
Claude BPE
~49 tok
Llama / DeepSeek
~51 tok

Hybrid Prompt Routing Cascade Simulator

Route routine queries to a fast lightweight model ($0.15/1M) and escalate only complex reasoning turns to Jamba 1.5 Large:

Cascaded Monthly Bill:$62.25/mo
Saves $132.75/mo (68% cost reduction) vs sending 100% of traffic to Jamba 1.5 Large.

Benchmark Scores & 6-Axis Capability Radar

Benchmark Encyclopedia
Coding (47)Reasoning (59)Knowledge (70)Speed (55)Context (85)Cost Value (72)
Jamba 1.5 Large2026 Frontier Median
SWE-bench Verified
41.2%
GPQA Diamond
51%
MMLU-Pro
70.2%
HumanEval
86.5%
Humanity's Last Exam
6.9%
Terminal-Bench
26.5%
SciCode
27.2%
LiveCodeBench
45%
AIME
54%
Long-Context Reasoning
75%
Chatbot Arena Elo
1275pts

Strengths

  • Revolutionary Mamba-2 SSM architecture handles 256K context with constant-memory scaling
  • Open weights available on Hugging Face for enterprise hosting
  • Native support for 9 languages and structured JSON output
  • Immune to quadratic attention slowdown on very long prompts

Limitations & Trade-offs

  • Substantial GPU footprint (398B total parameters in memory)
  • Output length limited to 4K tokens

Editorial Assessment

The crowning achievement of State Space Model (SSM) research in foundation models.

Best for: Enterprise long-context legal analytics, financial filings, and private Mamba hosting

Frequently Asked Questions about Jamba 1.5 Large

How much does the Jamba 1.5 Large API cost per 1M tokens?+

Jamba 1.5 Large by AI21 is priced at $2 per 1M input tokens and $8 per 1M output tokens. With prompt caching enabled, cached input tokens cost $0.5 per 1M tokens, and asynchronous Batch API requests receive a 50% discount.

Should I use a $20/month subscription or the Jamba 1.5 Large pay-as-you-go API?+

A flat $20/month consumer subscription is predictable for daily interactive chat and manual coding. However, if you are building software, running automated workflows, or sending low-to-moderate volume with prompt caching enabled, the pay-as-you-go API is typically far more cost-effective and offers higher rate limits without manual UI caps.

How many words and pages fit in Jamba 1.5 Large's context window?+

Jamba 1.5 Large features a 256K tokens context window, which equals approximately 192,000 English words or ~512 standard single-spaced pages in a single prompt. Its maximum output generation per turn is 4,096 tokens.

Can I run Jamba 1.5 Large locally on my own GPU (Open Weights)?+

Yes, Jamba 1.5 Large (398B (94B active)) releases open weights that can be self-hosted locally or on private cloud GPUs using vLLM, Ollama, SGLang, or llama.cpp.

Does AI21 train on data sent to the Jamba 1.5 Large API, and is commercial use allowed?+

100% Isolated when self-hosted on private GPUs or VPC. License tier: Open-Weights Research & Commercial License. Full commercial ownership of generated outputs. Supported deployment channels include: Self-Hosted GPU (vLLM / Ollama), Private VPC, or Managed Serverless API.

How does Jamba 1.5 Large perform on coding and reasoning benchmarks?+

Jamba 1.5 Large achieves a composite Intelligence Index of 42/100, scoring 41.2% on SWE-bench Verified, 51% on GPQA Diamond, 70.2% on MMLU-Pro, and 1275 pts on Chatbot Arena Elo.

What is Jamba 1.5 Large best used for?+

Jamba 1.5 Large is best suited for: Enterprise long-context legal analytics, financial filings, and private Mamba hosting. Assessment: The crowning achievement of State Space Model (SSM) research in foundation models.

AI21 Family Lineage, Routing Tiers & Upgrade Path

Step down to a lighter sibling for high-volume routing or step up to AI21's flagship reasoning tier:

AI Glossary & Architecture Concepts

View full glossary →

Key machine learning concepts and benchmarks relevant to Jamba 1.5 Large:

Benchmark scores, token prices, and rate limits evolve rapidly as AI labs release model updates. Always verify current specifications and pricing on the official provider documentation.

Sources: AI21 Labs Jamba 1.5 Technical Whitepaper↗