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Aya Expanse 8B vs Phi-3.5 Medium

A complete head-to-head: pricing, context window, benchmarks, modality coverage, and openness, with a programmatic verdict synthesized from the underlying data.

Updated

Aya Expanse 8B specs · Phi-3.5 Medium specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceTie

    Neither model publishes per-token API pricing.

  • Context windowPhi-3.5 Medium

    Phi-3.5 Medium accepts 128K tokens vs 8.2K, 15.6× 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.

  • ModalitiesTie

    Both handle text.

  • OpennessTie

    Both ship open weights, self-host either one.

On balance Phi-3.5 Medium edges ahead, winning 1 of 5 categories against Aya Expanse 8B's 0. Neither model publishes per-token API pricing. Phi-3.5 Medium accepts 128K tokens vs 8.2K, 15.6× the room for long documents and codebases.

No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores. Both target the same set of modalities (text), so the deciding factors are price, context, and raw quality. Both ship open weights, self-host either one.

Aya Expanse 8B is the newer of the two, released 2 months after Phi-3.5 Medium, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Aya Expanse 8B is usually picked for multilingual and translation workloads, while Phi-3.5 Medium sees more deployments in on device and edge deployment. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.

Side-by-side specs

SpecAya Expanse 8BPhi-3.5 Medium
ProviderCohereMicrosoft
ReleasedOct 2024Aug 2024
Modalitiestexttext
Context window8.2K tokens128K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1MPricing not publishedPricing not published
Output · 1MPricing not publishedPricing not published
Knowledge cutoff,,
Open weightsYes (CC-BY-NC 4.0)Yes (MIT)
API availableYesYes

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 ,
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day, vs ,
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day, vs ,

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).

Price calculator

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
  • Phi-3.5 MediumPricing unavailable

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 8BPhi-3.5 Medium
  • MMLU,78.9
Pick Aya Expanse 8B if

Aya Expanse 8B fits when…

  • Multilingual at small size
  • Strong cross-lingual transfer
  • Efficient on commodity GPUs
Pick Phi-3.5 Medium if

Phi-3.5 Medium fits when…

  • MIT license
  • 128k context
  • Strong reasoning at 14B
  • Long-context tasks, handles 128K tokens vs 8.2K for Aya Expanse 8B.
Don't want either?

Consider Command R+ (08-2024)

Cohere's flagship optimized for RAG and tool use in enterprise settings.

See Command R+ (08-2024) specsAya Expanse 8B vs Command R+ (08-2024)Phi-3.5 Medium vs Command R+ (08-2024)

Frequently asked

  • Is Aya Expanse 8B or Phi-3.5 Medium 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?
    Phi-3.5 Medium accepts 128K tokens vs 8.2K for Aya Expanse 8B.
  • Is Aya Expanse 8B or Phi-3.5 Medium better for coding?
    Both Aya Expanse 8B and Phi-3.5 Medium 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?
    Both ship with open weights. Aya Expanse 8B is licensed under CC-BY-NC 4.0; Phi-3.5 Medium under MIT.
  • When were Aya Expanse 8B and Phi-3.5 Medium released?
    Aya Expanse 8B was released by Cohere on 2024-10-23. Phi-3.5 Medium was released by Microsoft on 2024-08-20.
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