Compare / Claude Opus 4.8 vs Llama 3.1 8B Instruct

Claude Opus 4.8 vs Llama 3.1 8B Instruct

Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 18 results on 3 sources that measured both models.

Claude Opus 4.8
Anthropic · profile
Llama 3.1 8B Instruct
Meta · profile
Results compared
18
Shared sources
3

Claude Opus 4.8 or Llama 3.1 8B Instruct? The short answer

  • Llama 3.1 8B Instruct is cheaper: $0.058 against $11.00 per million tokens, 191 times less.
  • Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 41.8 against 6.9.
  • On our business benchmarks, Claude Opus 4.8 ranks higher for agents and tool use, reasoning and knowledge and writing.

At a glance

Claude Opus 4.8Llama 3.1 8B Instruct
Price per million tokens$5.50 in · $27.50 out$0.050 in · $0.080 out
Blended (3 in : 1 out)$11.00$0.058
Cheapest host, blended$10.00 (Claude Platform on AWS)$0.025 (DeepInfra, FP8)
Intelligence Index41.86.9
Spring Prompt overall––
Output speed, tokens a second––
Context window1,000,000 tokens131,072 tokens
WeightsClosedOpen
Developer based inthe USthe 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 caseClaude Opus 4.8Llama 3.1 8B Instruct
Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls 28 of 161 154 of 161
Professional workReal tasks from banking, consulting and law, business documents and freelance projects 17 of 51 not measured
Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge 18 of 195 173 of 195
WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality 24 of 187 178 of 187
Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers 29 of 153 not measured

Every shared result

BenchmarkMetricClaude Opus 4.8Llama 3.1 8B Instruct
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedBusiness, management and financeArena rating 1,4901,210
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedCreative writingArena rating 1,4671,177
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedExpert promptsArena rating 1,5251,198
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedInstruction followingArena rating 1,4911,191
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedOverallArena rating 1,4801,211
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedWriting, literature and languageArena rating 1,4741,182
Artificial AnalysisreportedArtificial Analysis Coding Indexindex score 74.35.40
Artificial AnalysisreportedArtificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score 41.86.90
Artificial AnalysisreportedGPQA Diamond% of questions 92.0%25.9%
Artificial AnalysisreportedHumanity's Last Exam% of questions 48.7%5.3%
Artificial AnalysisreportedIFBench% of instructions 62.2%28.6%
Artificial AnalysisreportedLong-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions 77.7%18.0%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTerminal-Bench 2.1% of tasks 84.6%1.5%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTerminal-Bench Hard% of tasks 58.3%0.8%
Artificial AnalysisreportedΤ²-bench telecom% of tasks 94.4%16.4%
UGI LeaderboardreportedRequested-length error% off the requested word count 6.0%20.0%
UGI LeaderboardreportedStyle adherencescore from 0 to 1 0.400.34
UGI LeaderboardreportedWriting scorescore out of 100 65.924.8

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 Claude Opus 4.8 better than Llama 3.1 8B Instruct?

It depends on the task. Among models available today, on our benchmarks and licensed sources, Claude Opus 4.8 ranks higher for agents and tool use, reasoning and knowledge and writing.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or Llama 3.1 8B Instruct?

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct costs $0.058 per million tokens (three input to one output), against $11.00 for Claude Opus 4.8.

Run Claude Opus 4.8 and Llama 3.1 8B Instruct on your own prompt

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