Llama 3.1 8B Instruct vs o3 Mini
o3 Mini leads Llama 3.1 8B Instruct on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, 12.5 to 6.9, and Llama 3.1 8B Instruct costs 55.0x less per output token ($0.08 vs $4.40 per million). Updated October 21, 2026; 43 benchmarks have a result for both.
Llama 3.1 8B Instruct or o3 Mini: which to pick
Neither model has a coding score yet, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Pick Llama 3.1 8B Instruct for output tokens 55.0x cheaper ($0.08 vs $4.40 per million) and work measured by LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) or Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run), where it leads.
- Shared results
- 43
- Llama 3.1 8B Instruct only
- 7
- o3 Mini only
- 27
- Like-for-like categories
- 7 of 9
Only benchmarks that tested both models count toward a pick; a result only one model has is shown but not compared.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
No call
Neither has a coding score yet.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
o3 Mini
o3 Mini leads, 12.5 against 6.9.
Same board, both measured
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only o3 Mini has a GPQA Diamond result, 75.5%.
Directional only
Math
AIME
No call
Only o3 Mini has a AIME result, 86.5%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only o3 Mini has a MMLU Pro result, 78.7%.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
o3 Mini
o3 Mini takes 200K tokens against 131K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Llama 3.1 8B Instruct
Llama 3.1 8B Instruct $0.0001, o3 Mini $0.0033 per turn.
List prices
At a glance
- Coding index
- Llama 3.1 8B Instruct not benchmarked, o3 Mini not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- Math, 55.3 points apart on average over 4 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- OTIS Mock AIME: Llama 3.1 8B Instruct 1.7% against o3 Mini 76.9%, 75.3 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Llama 3.1 8B Instruct $0.08 against o3 Mini $4.40 per million output tokens, 55.0x apart.
- Context window
- Llama 3.1 8B Instruct takes 131K tokens, o3 Mini 200K.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | Llama 3.1 8B Instruct | Bars | o3 Mini | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 0 | 5 | ||
| Intelligence | 0 | 2 | ||
| Agentic work | 0 | 1 | ||
| Reasoning | 0 | 6 | ||
| Math | 0 | 4 | ||
| Knowledge | 0 | 5 | ||
| General | 0 | 20 | ||
| All shared boards | 0 | 43 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index05
| Benchmark | Llama 3.1 8B Instruct | o3 Mini | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aider polyglot | Not measured | 60.4% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| SWE-bench Verified | Not measured | 42.4% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| SWE-bench Lite | Not measured | 32.3% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| AA Coding Index | 5.4 | Not measured | Only Llama 3.1 8B Instruct measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 71.5% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | 11.6% | 73.4% | o3 Mini |
| SciCode | Not measured | 42.8% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 0.8% | 6.8% | o3 Mini |
| GSO-Bench | Not measured | 1.3% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| WeirdML | 1.7% | 43.7% | o3 Mini |
| Cybench | Not measured | 22.5% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1195 | 1378 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1195 | 1364 | o3 Mini |
| Neither model has a result on the other 25 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index02
| Benchmark | Llama 3.1 8B Instruct | o3 Mini | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 6.9 | 12.5 | o3 Mini |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 116.5 | 140.2 | o3 Mini |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index01
| Benchmark | Llama 3.1 8B Instruct | o3 Mini | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 16.4% | 31.3% | o3 Mini |
| BALROG | 15.1% | Not measured | Only Llama 3.1 8B Instruct measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 37 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index06
| Benchmark | Llama 3.1 8B Instruct | o3 Mini | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | Not measured | 75.5% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 25.9% | 77.3% | o3 Mini |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 5.3% | 12.0% | o3 Mini |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 27.0% | 77.0% | o3 Mini |
| ARC-AGI | Not measured | 34.5% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | Not measured | 3.0% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| SimpleBench | Not measured | 22.8% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| Chess puzzles | Not measured | 15.0% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | Not measured | 7.0% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1175 | 1365 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1144 | 1364 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1196 | 1375 | o3 Mini |
| Neither model has a result on the other 9 boards here | |||
MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index04
| Benchmark | Llama 3.1 8B Instruct | o3 Mini | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | Not measured | 86.5% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| MATH 500 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 91.8% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| MGSM (Vals AI) | Not measured | 91.3% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| AA Math Index | 4.3 | Not measured | Only Llama 3.1 8B Instruct measured |
| AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run) | 4.3% | Not measured | Only Llama 3.1 8B Instruct measured |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 1.7% | 76.9% | o3 Mini |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | Not measured | 18.6% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | Not measured | 0.0% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| MATH level 5 | 22.9% | 96.5% | o3 Mini |
| GSM8K | 82.4% | Not measured | Only Llama 3.1 8B Instruct measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1179 | 1396 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1180 | 1399 | o3 Mini |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index05
| Benchmark | Llama 3.1 8B Instruct | o3 Mini | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | Not measured | 78.7% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 71.5% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | Not measured | 45.3% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | Not measured | 69.4% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | Not measured | 94.8% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | 47.6% | 80.2% | o3 Mini |
| SimpleQA Verified | Not measured | 15.3% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| MMLU | 56.1% | Not measured | Only Llama 3.1 8B Instruct measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1193 | 1339 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1182 | 1330 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1206 | 1328 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1166 | 1313 | o3 Mini |
| Neither model has a result on the other 5 boards here | |||
Web designNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Llama 3.1 8B Instruct | o3 Mini | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 9 boards here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index020
| Benchmark | Llama 3.1 8B Instruct | o3 Mini | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| IFBench | 28.6% | 67.1% | o3 Mini |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 18.0% | 43.0% | o3 Mini |
| DTBench | 50.9% | 68.8% | o3 Mini |
| LMCA | 5.4% | 19.0% | o3 Mini |
| Fiction.LiveBench | Not measured | 50.0% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| Creative writing (Lech Mazur) | Not measured | 61.7% | Only o3 Mini measured |
| PIQA | 81.2% | Not measured | Only Llama 3.1 8B Instruct measured |
| LMArena Text | 1187 | 1337 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1159 | 1337 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1154 | 1286 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: English | 1218 | 1351 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1148 | 1319 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1151 | 1379 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: German | 1144 | 1303 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1061 | 1286 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1053 | 1313 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: French | 1178 | 1334 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1169 | 1321 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1158 | 1304 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: Polish | Not measured | 1294 | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1172 | 1320 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1181 | 1343 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1162 | 1313 | o3 Mini |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1145 | 1283 | o3 Mini |
| Neither model has a result on the other 22 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Llama 3.1 8B Instruct | o3 Mini | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
Llama 3.1 8B Instruct costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Llama 3.1 8B Instruct costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Llama 3.1 8B Instruct costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | Meta Llama 3.1 8B Instruct | OpenAI o3 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Meta Llama | OpenAI |
| Weights | Open weights | No public weights listed |
| Released | July 23, 2024 | January 31, 2025 |
| Context window | 131K | 200K |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.05 | $1.10 |
| Output $/Mtok | $0.08 | $4.40 |
| Coding index | Not benchmarked | Not benchmarked |
| Independent measurements behind it | 0 | 0 |
| Cost per solved task | Not computable | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Llama 3.1 8B Instruct better than o3 Mini for coding?
Neither model has a coding score yet, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick Llama 3.1 8B Instruct for output tokens 55.0x cheaper ($0.08 vs $4.40 per million) and work measured by LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) or Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run), where it leads.
Which is cheaper, Llama 3.1 8B Instruct or o3 Mini?
Llama 3.1 8B Instruct costs $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; o3 Mini costs $1.10 and $4.40. Cost per solved task is known for neither of them.
Which has the bigger context window, Llama 3.1 8B Instruct or o3 Mini?
o3 Mini, with 200K tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks is the Llama 3.1 8B Instruct vs o3 Mini comparison based on?
43 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. Llama 3.1 8B Instruct's coding index rests on 0 independent benchmarks and o3 Mini's on 0. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.