Compare / Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking vs Llama 3.1 70B Instruct

Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking 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 VL 235B A22B Thinking
Alibaba · profile
Llama 3.1 70B Instruct
Meta · profile
Results compared
15
Shared sources
3

Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking or Llama 3.1 70B Instruct? The short answer

  • Llama 3.1 70B Instruct is cheaper: $0.40 against $1.30 per million tokens, 3.2 times less.
  • Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 13.4 against 6.6.
  • On our business benchmarks, Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking ranks higher for reasoning and knowledge and writing.

At a glance

Qwen3 VL 235B A22B ThinkingLlama 3.1 70B Instruct
Price per million tokens$0.40 in · $4.00 out$0.40 in · $0.40 out
Blended (3 in : 1 out)$1.30$0.40
Cheapest host, blended$1.30 (Alibaba)$0.40 (DeepInfra, FP8)
Intelligence Index13.46.6
Spring Prompt overall––
Output speed, tokens a second––
Context window131,072 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 VL 235B A22B ThinkingLlama 3.1 70B Instruct
Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge 118 of 195 179 of 195
WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality 125 of 187 153 of 187

Every shared result

BenchmarkMetricQwen3 VL 235B A22B ThinkingLlama 3.1 70B Instruct
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedBusiness, management and financeArena rating 1,3921,287
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedCreative writingArena rating 1,3391,257
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedExpert promptsArena rating 1,4391,275
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedInstruction followingArena rating 1,3831,273
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedOverallArena rating 1,3951,293
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedWriting, literature and languageArena rating 1,3651,264
Artificial AnalysisreportedArtificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score 13.46.60
Artificial AnalysisreportedGPQA Diamond% of questions 77.2%40.9%
Artificial AnalysisreportedHumanity's Last Exam% of questions 11.9%4.5%
Artificial AnalysisreportedIFBench% of instructions 56.5%34.4%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTerminal-Bench Hard% of tasks 11.4%3.0%
Artificial AnalysisreportedΤ²-bench telecom% of tasks 54.1%15.2%
UGI LeaderboardreportedRequested-length error% off the requested word count 30.0%15.0%
UGI LeaderboardreportedStyle adherencescore from 0 to 1 0.340.38
UGI LeaderboardreportedWriting scorescore out of 100 32.332.8

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 VL 235B A22B Thinking better than Llama 3.1 70B Instruct?

It depends on the task. Among models available today, on our benchmarks and licensed sources, Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking ranks higher for reasoning and knowledge and writing.

Which is cheaper, Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking or Llama 3.1 70B Instruct?

Llama 3.1 70B Instruct costs $0.40 per million tokens (three input to one output), against $1.30 for Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking.

Run Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking 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.