In this guide · 7 sections
Short answer
Use SEA-LION if you need an open model you can run on your own servers or a chatbot that handles Southeast Asian languages, and you have a developer to set it up. For everyday writing and email, a business plan of ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini is simpler and usually stronger.
What is SEA-LION?
SEA-LION stands for Southeast Asian Languages in One Network. It is built by AI Singapore, a national programme supported by the National Research Foundation and hosted by NUS. The project describes SEA-LION as a family of open-source, multilingual models designed to understand Southeast Asia's languages and cultures, performing in more than 11 regional languages.
SEA-LION is not trained from scratch. Each version takes a strong open model from a large lab (Google's Gemma, Alibaba's Qwen, NVIDIA's Nemotron, Meta's Llama) and continues training it on Southeast Asian text and instructions. That is why model names look like 'Qwen-SEA-LION-v4.5-27B'.
The current models (October 2026)
| Model | Built on | Size | Released |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEA-LION v4.8 (Nemotron) | NVIDIA Nemotron 3 | 30B and 120B (mixture of experts) | September 2026 |
| SEA-LION v4.5 (Qwen) | Qwen 3.6 | 27B | 2026 |
| SEA-LION v4.5 (Gemma) | Gemma 4 E2B | Small, runs on modest hardware | 2026 |
| SEA-Guard | SEA-LION family | Safety classifier | 2026 |
The v4.8 announcement (18 September 2026) describes it as the first SEA-LION release using a mixture-of-experts design, which activates only part of the model for each answer to save computing power. The weights are on Hugging Face; the v4.8 30B card lists an MIT licence.
How SEA-LION scores against other models
AI Singapore runs its own benchmark, SEA-HELM, which tests models on chat, instruction-following, regional knowledge and tasks in Southeast Asian languages. The snapshot below is from the leaderboard dated 18 September 2026, open-weights models only. Higher is better; we have not run these tests ourselves.
| Model (open weights) | SEA overall | Malay | Tamil |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemma 4 31B (Google) | 76.17 | 76.27 | 76.40 |
| Qwen 3.6 27B (Alibaba) | 74.64 | 76.26 | 75.32 |
| SEA-LION v4.5 (Qwen) 27B | 73.24 | 75.23 | 71.38 |
| GPT OSS 120B (OpenAI) | 66.14 | 69.68 | 66.05 |
| SEA-LION v4.8 (Nemotron) 120B | 63.44 | 73.25 | 56.35 |
| Nemotron 3 Super 120B (NVIDIA) | 49.30 | 68.66 | 21.83 |
Two things stand out. First, SEA-LION's adaptation clearly helps its base model: v4.8 120B lifts the Nemotron 3 Super score from 49.30 to 63.44, and Tamil from 21.83 to 56.35. Second, the latest general-purpose open models from Google and Alibaba already score at or slightly above SEA-LION on the same test. SEA-LION's edge today is less about raw scores and more about local focus, openness and support.
SEA-HELM also evaluates 16 closed models such as those behind ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini through their APIs. For how to read leaderboards like this without being misled, see our LLM benchmarks explainer.
Ways to access SEA-LION
There is no SEA-LION subscription like ChatGPT Business. You have four routes, from easiest to most work:
- Playground and Telegram bot: AI Singapore offers a web playground and a Telegram bot for trying the models. Good for testing your own sample questions, not for business data.
- Trial API: the SEA-LION API docs explain how to create one trial key per user. It is compatible with OpenAI-style code. As of 4 June 2026 the limit is 10 requests per minute per user, so it suits prototypes, not a busy chatbot.
- Cloud platforms: AI Singapore says the models are available on Hugging Face, Ollama and major cloud providers, where you pay for the computing time.
- Self-hosting: download the weights and run them on your own server or a rented GPU. Smaller and quantised versions can run on lighter hardware; the large models need data-centre GPUs.
Realistic uses for a Singapore SME
Most small businesses in Singapore work mainly in English, often with Chinese, Malay or Tamil-speaking customers. That shapes where SEA-LION is useful.
SEA-LION is worth a look for
- A customer chatbot that must answer in Malay, Tamil, Thai, Vietnamese or Indonesian
- Regional businesses serving customers across ASEAN
- Projects where data must stay on servers you control
- Developers building a product on a free, open model
Stick with ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for
- Everyday email, documents and spreadsheets in English
- Teams with no developer to host and maintain a model
- Tasks needing the strongest reasoning or coding models
- Work already covered by Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace AI
If your concern is data control rather than language, compare SEA-LION with other open models. Our guide on whether DeepSeek or Qwen is safe for business explains the difference between using a hosted app and running open weights yourself.
How to test SEA-LION on your own tasks
Benchmarks are averages. What matters is how a model handles your customers' actual questions. A short test takes about 30 minutes.
Collect 10 real questions
Take recent customer enquiries in the languages you serve, with names and contact details removed.
Write your reference answers
Note what a good staff member would reply, including your prices and policies.
Ask SEA-LION in the playground
Paste each question with your FAQ text as context. Use only anonymised, non-sensitive examples.
Ask your current AI tool the same
Use the identical prompt in ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini so the comparison is fair.
Score accuracy and tone
Mark each answer correct, partly correct or wrong, and note whether the language sounds natural to a native speaker.
If SEA-LION is clearly better in a language that matters to you, a developer can then estimate hosting costs. If not, a mainstream business AI plan is the simpler choice; our ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini comparison covers those.
Do it yourself or get help?
Trying SEA-LION in the playground is a DIY job. Putting it into production is not: you need hosting, monitoring, guard-rails against wrong or unsafe answers, PDPA notices and someone to update the model when a new version ships.
For a website assistant that answers from your own FAQ in English plus one more language, AI Website Assistant (S$790) is the faster route and uses whichever model fits your needs. If you need a self-hosted model or a custom multilingual tool, Custom Tool or Dashboard (from S$1,990) starts with a written scope and fixed quote. Our AI chatbot guide explains running costs and risks either way.
Frequently asked questions
The model weights are free to download from Hugging Face, and the latest cards list open licences such as MIT. Running them is not free: you pay for servers or cloud GPUs. AI Singapore also offers a free trial API and playground, with a limit of 10 requests per minute per user as of June 2026.
Not for most everyday business tasks. SEA-LION is an open model tuned for Southeast Asian languages and can be self-hosted, which ChatGPT cannot. On AI Singapore's own SEA-HELM benchmark, SEA-LION scores close to other leading open models of similar size. For English office work, mainstream business AI plans are simpler.
Yes. Malay and Tamil are among the Southeast Asian languages SEA-HELM measures. On the September 2026 leaderboard, SEA-LION v4.5 (Qwen) 27B scored 75.23 in Malay and 71.38 in Tamil. Test it with your own customer questions, because benchmark tasks may differ from yours.
SEA-LION is developed by AI Singapore, a national AI programme supported by the National Research Foundation and hosted by the National University of Singapore. Recent versions were built in collaboration with partners such as NVIDIA, on top of open models from Google, Alibaba, NVIDIA and others.
If you host the model yourself on servers in Singapore, your prompts and outputs stay in that environment. That is one of the main reasons to choose an open model. The free playground and trial API are hosted services, so do not use them for personal or confidential data.