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PLLuM and Bielik for business: choose a Polish model
Short answer
PLLuM and Bielik are two families of Polish language models that you can run in your own environment. The choice depends on the specific variant: its licence, its terms of use, its GPU memory and its result on 50 to 100 cases from the company's process. In 2026 research Bielik wins once and PLLuM once, depending on the corpus and the method.
How we workDetails ↓
- 01Call30 minutes with an engineer, free
- 02PrototypeA working system on your process and data, free
- 03ImplementationTarget and fixed price in the contract; 50% at signing
- 04Acceptance50% once the agreed target is met
- model on your server or in the cloud in the EU
- quoted after the review
- same work in application with EU cloud model
- from €3,000
- task, data and equipment analysis
- €0
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Author: Syntalith · 3 min read
Statistics
Polish language models: statistics 2026
48 GB
of GPU memory is what PLLuM-12B needs in production according to the project's table, so a 24 GB server is not enough. For Bielik 11B you check a quantised version or a larger card.
146
According to Bartanowicz and Jassem (LREC 2026), in a RAG system on technical documentation assessed on 146 reference questions, Bielik-11B-v2.3-Instruct consistently outperformed PLLuM-12B-nc-chat.
83%
According to Smits and Walkowiak (EACL 2026), in RAG on Polish Wikipedia assessed on 1,000 PolQA questions, PLLuM-12B matched the quality of 70B models while using 83% less energy.
32
According to the SpeakLeash model card (2025), Bielik-11B-v3.0-Instruct was trained on texts in 32 European languages with an emphasis on Polish and released under the Apache 2.0 licence.
Source: SpeakLeash, Bielik-11B-v3.0-Instruct model card (2025) ↗
1.1
According to the Bielik 3.0 terms of use, version 1.1 of 31 July 2025, the model and the services may not be used to process any personal data.
Figures checked: 22 October 2026
A quick decision table
| Question | PLLuM | Bielik |
|---|---|---|
| Who develops it | a consortium led by NASK PIB | the SpeakLeash Foundation and ACK Cyfronet AGH |
| Licence | depends on the variant: Apache 2.0, Llama 3.1 or non-commercial | Apache 2.0 for the v3.0 versions according to the cards |
| Additional terms | according to the variant's card | terms of use that forbid processing personal data |
| GPU memory | 12B about 48 GB, 70B about 168 GB in production | checked for the chosen version and quantisation |
| RAG result | matched 70B on Polish Wikipedia (EACL 2026) | better than PLLuM-12B on technical documentation (LREC 2026) |
The table does not replace a pilot. The family name does not tell you how the model will handle invoices, correspondence or the vocabulary of your sector. The studies differ in model version, corpus, questions and evaluation method, so the phrase „the best Polish model” needs those details.
The licence of the specific variant
PLLuM is available in several variants on the project website and in the CYFRAGOVPL organisation. Bielik version 3.0 has cards on the SpeakLeash account, and the terms of use supplement the Apache 2.0 licence. Results of a non-commercial variant cannot decide the purchase of a variant you are allowed to deploy.
- The name and version of the model
- The address of the card and the licence file
- The terms of use and any limits on data
- The owner of the decision on the company's side
- A fresh check when the version changes
When PLLuM, and when Bielik
The buyer requires a trace of the model's origin
PLLuM in a variant with a commercial licence
a test on 50 to 100 cases
Technical documentation and RAG
Bielik 11B and PLLuM-12B on the same questions
a test on 50 to 100 cases
Personal data in the process
PLLuM or an API model under a processing agreement
an assessment with the DPO before the test
PLLuM matters to organisations that value the documented origin of a project and can start the analysis from the cards published by the CYFRAGOVPL organisation. Rule it out at this stage when the team only says „let's take the newest PLLuM” without naming the variant and the licence. Bielik is worth testing on documents without personal data, because its terms of use exclude such processing. In both cases maintaining the model is part of the project, and a one-off download of the file does not finish it.
A test before you buy a server
Prepare 50 to 100 cases from one process with the expected result and the allowed sources. Run the same set on PLLuM, Bielik and one model through an API. Compare accuracy, faithfulness to the source, behaviour when data are missing and the number of corrections an employee makes.
- Hetzner GEX45 GPU server, 24 GB
- €214 a month
- Upkeep 8 h × €34.90
- €279
- One case on the API, 3,000 + 1,000 tokens on Claude Sonnet 5.5
- $0.016 (€0.01428)
Break-even
(€214 + €279) ÷ €0.01428 = about 34,540 cases a month
Scenario. A model that needs more than 24 GB needs a bigger server, for example the GEX63 at €999 a month, which raises the threshold. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat. Price of the GEX45 server with 24 GB of GPU memory from Hetzner's page on 22 October 2026, without the one-off €209 fee. The API at Anthropic's rates, at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
Below the threshold the API is cheaper, unless the data must not reach a model provider. In that case the requirement decides, and the count shows what it costs. Hardware and the GDPR are covered in the article on deploying a Polish model, and we build the app on the chosen model as part of private LLMs. In the free analysis we choose the process for the test.
Worked example · Scenario
How we count the payback: a Polish model in an organisation
We run the same count for your organisation in the free analysis.
€3,490
a month for the work on 600 questions
EU cloud version payback: 1 mo.
Our assumptions are 10 minutes to find an instruction, and checking in 15% of the old time. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat, for companies with 10 or more employees. Model cost: Claude Sonnet 5.5, about 6,000 + 500 tokens per answer in the EU cloud version, at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026. We count the payback for an app with a model in the EU cloud (from €3,000 net). We price the model on your server after a call, and the cost of people's work stays the same.
See the full calculation →
