Compare / Qwen3.5 397B A17B vs Llama 3.1 70B Instruct

Qwen3.5 397B A17B vs Llama 3.1 70B Instruct

Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 15 results on 3 sources that measured both models.

Qwen3.5 397B A17B
Alibaba · profile
Llama 3.1 70B Instruct
Meta · profile
Results compared
15
Shared sources
3

Qwen3.5 397B A17B or Llama 3.1 70B Instruct? The short answer

  • Llama 3.1 70B Instruct is cheaper: $0.40 against $1.29 per million tokens, 3.2 times less.
  • Qwen3.5 397B A17B scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 21.4 against 6.6.
  • On our business benchmarks, Qwen3.5 397B A17B ranks higher for reasoning and knowledge and writing.

At a glance

Qwen3.5 397B A17BLlama 3.1 70B Instruct
Price per million tokens$0.55 in · $3.50 out$0.40 in · $0.40 out
Blended (3 in : 1 out)$1.29$0.40
Cheapest host, blended$0.88 (Alibaba)$0.40 (DeepInfra, FP8)
Intelligence Index21.46.6
Spring Prompt overall––
Output speed, tokens a second90–
Context window262,144 tokens131,072 tokens
WeightsOpenOpen
Developer based inChinathe US

Prices are the developer's list price where we have read it, otherwise the typical host on OpenRouter; see every model's price. Intelligence and speed from Artificial Analysis.

Which is better for what

Each model's rank among models available today, for each kind of work, from our own benchmarks and licensed sources. The better rank is in green.

Use caseQwen3.5 397B A17BLlama 3.1 70B Instruct
Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls 65 of 161 not measured
Professional workReal tasks from banking, consulting and law, business documents and freelance projects 48 of 51 not measured
Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge 69 of 195 179 of 195
WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality 66 of 187 153 of 187
Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers 72 of 153 not measured

Every shared result

BenchmarkMetricQwen3.5 397B A17BLlama 3.1 70B Instruct
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedBusiness, management and financeArena rating 1,4451,287
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedCreative writingArena rating 1,4051,257
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedExpert promptsArena rating 1,4761,275
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedInstruction followingArena rating 1,4341,273
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedOverallArena rating 1,4421,293
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedWriting, literature and languageArena rating 1,4211,264
Artificial AnalysisreportedArtificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score 21.46.60
Artificial AnalysisreportedGPQA Diamond% of questions 89.3%40.9%
Artificial AnalysisreportedHumanity's Last Exam% of questions 29.0%4.5%
Artificial AnalysisreportedIFBench% of instructions 78.8%34.4%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTerminal-Bench Hard% of tasks 40.9%3.0%
Artificial AnalysisreportedΤ²-bench telecom% of tasks 95.6%15.2%
UGI LeaderboardreportedRequested-length error% off the requested word count 23.0%15.0%
UGI LeaderboardreportedStyle adherencescore from 0 to 1 0.330.38
UGI LeaderboardreportedWriting scorescore out of 100 50.132.8

Bold green marks the better value on that metric. Where a source reports ranges that overlap, the difference may not be meaningful; see the benchmark page for ranges.

Quick answers

Is Qwen3.5 397B A17B better than Llama 3.1 70B Instruct?

It depends on the task. Among models available today, on our benchmarks and licensed sources, Qwen3.5 397B A17B ranks higher for reasoning and knowledge and writing.

Which is cheaper, Qwen3.5 397B A17B or Llama 3.1 70B Instruct?

Llama 3.1 70B Instruct costs $0.40 per million tokens (three input to one output), against $1.29 for Qwen3.5 397B A17B.

Run Qwen3.5 397B A17B and Llama 3.1 70B Instruct on your own prompt

Benchmarks aren't your data. Try both side by side in the playground, with the cost of every answer.