Aya Expanse 8B vs Claude 3.5 Haiku
A complete head-to-head: pricing, context window, benchmarks, modality coverage, and openness, with a programmatic verdict synthesized from the underlying data.
- PriceClaude 3.5 Haiku
Claude 3.5 Haiku publishes pricing ($4.00 / 1M output tokens) while Aya Expanse 8B does not.
- Context windowClaude 3.5 Haiku
Claude 3.5 Haiku accepts 200K tokens vs 8.2K, 24.4× the room for long documents and codebases.
- BenchmarksTie
No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores.
- ModalitiesClaude 3.5 Haiku
Claude 3.5 Haiku supports 2 modalities (text, vision) vs 1 for Aya Expanse 8B.
- OpennessAya Expanse 8B
Aya Expanse 8B ships open weights (CC-BY-NC 4.0); Claude 3.5 Haiku is API-only.
On balance Claude 3.5 Haiku edges ahead, winning 3 of 5 categories against Aya Expanse 8B's 1. Claude 3.5 Haiku publishes pricing ($4.00 / 1M output tokens) while Aya Expanse 8B does not. Claude 3.5 Haiku accepts 200K tokens vs 8.2K, 24.4× the room for long documents and codebases.
No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores. They differ in modality coverage, Aya Expanse 8B handles text while Claude 3.5 Haiku handles text, vision, which can be the deciding factor before you even look at benchmarks. Aya Expanse 8B ships open weights (CC-BY-NC 4.0); Claude 3.5 Haiku is API-only.
Both shipped within roughly a month of each other in 2024, so they share the same generation of training data and tooling. Aya Expanse 8B is usually picked for multilingual and translation workloads, while Claude 3.5 Haiku sees more deployments in customer support and code completion. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.
Side-by-side specs
| Spec | Aya Expanse 8B | Claude 3.5 Haiku |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Cohere | Anthropic |
| Released | Oct 2024 | Nov 2024 |
| Modalities | text | text, vision |
| Context window | 8.2K tokens | 200K tokens |
| Max output | , | , |
| Input · 1M | Pricing not published | $0.80 / 1M tokens |
| Output · 1M | Pricing not published | $4.00 / 1M tokens |
| Knowledge cutoff | , | , |
| Open weights | Yes (CC-BY-NC 4.0) | No |
| API available | Yes | Yes |
Pricing at scale
What you'd actually pay at typical workloads. Numbers come from each model's published per-million-token rates.
- Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day, vs $8.40
- Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day, vs $84.00
- RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day, vs $144
Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates).
Estimated spend for the listed models at your usage. Numbers are derived from each model's published per-million-token rates.
- Aya Expanse 8BPricing unavailable
- Claude 3.5 Haiku$0.280
Benchmarks compared
Only sourced numbers. Where a benchmark is missing for one model we show the available value rather than fabricating the other.
Aya Expanse 8B fits when…
- Multilingual at small size
- Strong cross-lingual transfer
- Efficient on commodity GPUs
- Self-hosting and on-prem requirements, open weights (CC-BY-NC 4.0).
Claude 3.5 Haiku fits when…
- Fast
- Cheap for Anthropic
- Strong code at small size
- Long-context tasks, handles 200K tokens vs 8.2K for Aya Expanse 8B.
- Multimodal needs covering vision.
Consider Command R+ (08-2024)
Cohere's flagship optimized for RAG and tool use in enterprise settings.
Frequently asked
Is Aya Expanse 8B or Claude 3.5 Haiku cheaper?
Per-token pricing isn't published for at least one of these models, check each model's spec page for current rates.Which has the larger context window?
Claude 3.5 Haiku accepts 200K tokens vs 8.2K for Aya Expanse 8B.Is Aya Expanse 8B or Claude 3.5 Haiku better for coding?
Both Aya Expanse 8B and Claude 3.5 Haiku are competitive on coding benchmarks. See each model's individual spec page for HumanEval and SWE-bench scores where published. For an opinionated pick, consult our Best LLM for Coding ranking.Are either of these models open source?
Aya Expanse 8B ships open weights (CC-BY-NC 4.0). Claude 3.5 Haiku is API-only.When were Aya Expanse 8B and Claude 3.5 Haiku released?
Aya Expanse 8B was released by Cohere on 2024-10-23. Claude 3.5 Haiku was released by Anthropic on 2024-11-04.
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