Llama 3 8B Instruct vs Llama 3.1 70B Instruct
Llama 3 8B Instruct (2024) and Llama 3.1 70B Instruct (2024) are compact production models from AI at Meta. Llama 3 8B Instruct ships a 8k-token context window, while Llama 3.1 70B Instruct ships a 128k-token context window. On HumanEval, Llama 3.1 70B Instruct leads by 15.9 pts. This comparison covers specs, pricing, API access, capabilities, benchmarks, input and output token costs, and production fit for coding and agent workloads.
Llama 3 8B Instruct is ~1900% cheaper at $0.02/1M; pay for Llama 3.1 70B Instruct only for long-context analysis.
Decision scorecard
Local evidence first| Signal | Llama 3 8B Instruct | Llama 3.1 70B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | provider-routed production | provider-routed production |
| Decision fit | Coding, Classification, and JSON / Tool use | Coding, RAG, and Long context |
| Context window | 8k | 128k |
| Cheapest output | $0.05/1M tokens | $0.40/1M tokens |
| Provider routes | 17 tracked | 13 tracked |
| Shared benchmarks | 3 shared | HumanEval leader |
Decision tradeoffs
- Llama 3 8B Instruct has the lower cheapest tracked output price at $0.05/1M tokens.
- Llama 3 8B Instruct has broader tracked provider coverage for fallback and route flexibility.
- Local decision data tags Llama 3 8B Instruct for Coding, Classification, and JSON / Tool use.
- Llama 3.1 70B Instruct holds a shared-benchmark lead on HumanEval, ahead by 15.9 points.
- Llama 3.1 70B Instruct has the larger context window for long prompts, retrieval packs, or transcript analysis.
- Local decision data tags Llama 3.1 70B Instruct for Coding, RAG, and Long context.
Monthly cost at traffic
Estimate token spend from the cheapest tracked input and output route or tier on this page.
Llama 3 8B Instruct
$28.50
Cheapest tracked route/tier: DeepInfra
Llama 3.1 70B Instruct
$420
Cheapest tracked route/tier: Hyperbolic AI Inference
Estimated monthly gap: $392. Batch, cache, alternate speed tiers, and negotiated pricing are excluded from this local estimate.
Switch friction
- Provider overlap exists on Cloudflare Workers AI, OctoAI API (Deprecated), and Together AI; start route-level A/B tests there.
- Llama 3.1 70B Instruct is $0.35/1M tokens higher on cheapest tracked output pricing, so quality gains need to justify the spend.
- Provider overlap exists on AWS Bedrock, DeepInfra, and OctoAI API (Deprecated); start route-level A/B tests there.
- Llama 3 8B Instruct is $0.35/1M tokens lower on cheapest tracked output pricing before cache, batch, or negotiated discounts.
Specs
| Specification | ||
|---|---|---|
| Released | 2024-04-18 | 2024-07-23 |
| Context window | 8k | 128k |
| Parameters | 8B | 70B |
| Architecture | Decoder Only | Decoder Only |
| License | Llama 3 Community | Llama 3 Community |
| Openness | Open weights | Open weights |
| Weights | Available | Available |
| Code | Unknown | Unknown |
| Commercial use | Commercial use: conditional | Commercial use: conditional |
| Knowledge cutoff | 2023-03 | 2023-12 |
Pricing and availability
| Pricing attribute | Llama 3 8B Instruct | Llama 3.1 70B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $0.02/1M tokens | $0.40/1M tokens |
| Output price | $0.05/1M tokens | $0.40/1M tokens |
| Providers |
Capabilities
| Capability | Llama 3 8B Instruct | Llama 3.1 70B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Vision | No | No |
| Multimodal | No | No |
| Reasoning | No | No |
| JSON / Tool use | No | No |
| Structured outputs | Yes | Yes |
| Code execution | No | No |
| IDE integration | No | No |
| Computer use | No | No |
| Parallel agents | No | No |
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Llama 3 8B Instruct | Llama 3.1 70B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| HumanEval | 68.2 | 84.1 |
| Massive Multitask Language Understanding | 76.9 | 86.0 |
| HellaSwag | 91.1 | 94.2 |
Continue comparing
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- DeepSeek V4 Flash vs Llama 3 8B Instruct
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- Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Llama 3.1 70B Instruct
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Last reviewed: 2026-07-11. Data sourced from public model cards and provider documentation.