LLM Reference
GCP Vertex AI

Using Llama 3.1 405B Instruct on GCP Vertex AI

Implementation guide · Llama 3.1 · AI at Meta

ServerlessOpen Weights

GCP Vertex AI exposes Llama 3.1 405B Instruct through model ID llama3.1-405b-instruct. Use the setup steps, sourced pricing, capabilities, and official provider links below to validate this route before deployment.

Last refreshed 2026-07-09. Next refresh: weekly.

Quick Start

  1. 1
    Create an account at GCP Vertex AI and generate an API key.
  2. 2
    Use the GCP Vertex AI SDK or REST API to call llama3.1-405b-instruct — see the documentation for request format.
  3. 3
    You'll be billed $5.00/1M input, $16.00/1M output tokens. See full pricing.

Code Examples

Install
pip install google-cloud-aiplatform
API key
GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT
Model ID
llama3.1-405b-instruct

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".

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("llama3.1-405b-instruct")
response = model.generate_content("Hello")
print(response.text)

Pricing on GCP Vertex AI

TypePrice (per 1M)
Input tokens$5.00
Output tokens$16.00

Capabilities

Structured Outputs

About Llama 3.1 405B Instruct

Llama 3.1 405B Instruct is Meta's advanced large language model released on July 23, 2024, featuring 405 billion parameters. It utilizes an optimized transformer architecture with supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning for enhanced instruction-following capabilities. The model supports multiple languages, was trained on 15 trillion tokens, and fine-tuned with 25 million synthetic examples. It excels in multilingual dialogue and text generation, making it ideal for assistant-like applications. Llama 3.1 incorporates robust safety measures and ethical considerations, outperforming many existing models on various industry benchmarks.

Model Specs

Released2024-07-23
Parameters405B
Context128k
ArchitectureDecoder Only
Knowledge cutoff2023-12

Provider

GCP Vertex AI
GCP Vertex AI

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Mountain View, California, United States