Last refreshed 2026-05-11. Next refresh: weekly.
Why use Llama 3 8B Instruct on GCP Vertex AI?
GCP Vertex AI offers Llama 3 8B Instruct with pay-as-you-go pricing at $0.12/1M input tokens. Vertex AI is Google Cloud's managed AI platform, offering access to Gemini models and hundreds of partner models alongside tools for fine-tuning, grounding, vector search, and end-to-end MLOps pipelines.
Compare Llama 3 8B Instruct across 16 providers to find the best fit for your use caseSetup recipe
Python + curlpip install google-cloud-aiplatformexport GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT=...import os
import vertexai
from vertexai.generative_models import GenerativeModel
vertexai.init(project=os.environ["GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT"], location="us-central1")llama3-8b-instructRequest example
import os
import vertexai
from vertexai.generative_models import GenerativeModel
# Reads GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT from env; authenticates via Application Default Credentials
vertexai.init(project=os.environ["GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT"], location="us-central1")
model = GenerativeModel("llama3-8b-instruct")
response = model.generate_content("Hello")
print(response.text)Gotchas
- For Google-published models use the model name directly, e.g. "gemini-2.0-flash-001". For third-party publishers (Anthropic, Meta, etc.) use the full publisher path, e.g. "publishers/anthropic/models/claude-3-5-sonnet-v2@20241022".
- The examples expect GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT; rename it only if your application config maps the new variable.
Compare Llama 3 8B Instruct Across Providers
| Provider | Input (per 1M) | Output (per 1M) |
|---|---|---|
| AWS Bedrock | $0.30 | $0.60 |
| DeepInfra | $0.05 | $0.15 |
| OctoAI API (Deprecated) | $0.15 | $0.15 |
| Fireworks AI | $0.20 | $0.20 |
| Alibaba Cloud PAI-EAS | — | — |
Pricing
| Type | Price (per 1M) |
|---|---|
| Input tokens | $0.12 |
| Output tokens | $0.36 |
Capabilities
About Llama 3 8B Instruct
The Llama 3 8B Instruct model, released on April 18, 2024, is Meta's latest instruction-following language model with 8 billion parameters. It utilizes an auto-regressive transformer architecture with Grouped-Query Attention for improved scalability. Trained on over 15 trillion tokens and fine-tuned with 10 million human-annotated examples, it excels in dialogue and conversational tasks. The model outperforms its predecessors on industry benchmarks, scoring 68.4 on MMLU (5-shot). Designed for commercial and research applications, it prioritizes safety and helpfulness, making it suitable for chatbots, virtual assistants, and other interactive AI applications. For more details, visit the Hugging Face page [1].
FAQ
What does Llama 3 8B Instruct cost on GCP Vertex AI?
On GCP Vertex AI, Llama 3 8B Instruct costs $0.12 per 1M input tokens and $0.36 per 1M output tokens.
What is the context window for Llama 3 8B Instruct on GCP Vertex AI?
Llama 3 8B Instruct supports a 8,000 token context window on GCP Vertex AI.
How does GCP Vertex AI compare to other Llama 3 8B Instruct providers?
Llama 3 8B Instruct is available from 16 providers. The cheapest input pricing is $0.03/1M tokens from OpenRouter.
Who created Llama 3 8B Instruct?
Llama 3 8B Instruct was created by AI at Meta as part of the Llama 3 model family.
Is Llama 3 8B Instruct open source?
Llama 3 8B Instruct is open source according to the seed data.