Glossary — Tools
Open model
An open model is a language model whose weights are publicly downloadable, so it can be run on your own servers without going through anybody's API.
2 tokensOpenmodel
Simply put#
Closed models like GPT-5 or Claude live on the maker's servers and you talk to them over the network. Open models like Llama or Mistral can be downloaded and run yourself.
Example#
A company that may not send data outside the building can run an open model on its own hardware. In exchange it takes on the hardware, the updates and the performance work.
Why it matters to you#
"Open" does not always mean open source in the legal sense — licences vary and some restrict commercial use. Read the licence before you build on it.