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Claude 3.5 Haiku vs Llama 4 8B

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

Updated

Claude 3.5 Haiku specs · Llama 4 8B specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceClaude 3.5 Haiku

    Claude 3.5 Haiku publishes pricing ($4.00 / 1M output tokens) while Llama 4 8B does not.

  • Context windowClaude 3.5 Haiku

    Claude 3.5 Haiku accepts 200K tokens vs 128K, 1.6× 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.

  • ModalitiesClaude 3.5 Haiku

    Claude 3.5 Haiku supports 2 modalities (text, vision) vs 1 for Llama 4 8B.

  • OpennessLlama 4 8B

    Llama 4 8B ships open weights (Llama 4 Community License); Claude 3.5 Haiku is API-only.

On balance Claude 3.5 Haiku edges ahead, winning 3 of 5 categories against Llama 4 8B's 1. Claude 3.5 Haiku publishes pricing ($4.00 / 1M output tokens) while Llama 4 8B does not. Claude 3.5 Haiku accepts 200K tokens vs 128K, 1.6× the room for long documents and codebases.

No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores. They differ in modality coverage, Claude 3.5 Haiku handles text, vision while Llama 4 8B handles text, which can be the deciding factor before you even look at benchmarks. Llama 4 8B ships open weights (Llama 4 Community License); Claude 3.5 Haiku is API-only.

Llama 4 8B is the newer of the two, released 5 months after Claude 3.5 Haiku, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Claude 3.5 Haiku is usually picked for customer support and code completion workloads, while Llama 4 8B sees more deployments in local llm and on device. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.

Side-by-side specs

SpecClaude 3.5 HaikuLlama 4 8B
ProviderAnthropicMeta
ReleasedNov 2024Apr 2025
Modalitiestext, visiontext
Context window200K tokens128K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1M$0.80 / 1M tokensPricing not published
Output · 1M$4.00 / 1M tokensPricing not published
Knowledge cutoff,,
Open weightsNoYes (Llama 4 Community License)
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$8.40 vs ,
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day$84.00 vs ,
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day$144 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.

  • Claude 3.5 Haiku$0.280
  • Llama 4 8BPricing unavailable

Benchmarks compared

Only sourced numbers. Where a benchmark is missing for one model we show the available value rather than fabricating the other.

Benchmark scores not yet available. We only publish numbers we can source from official model cards or independent leaderboards, see methodology.
Pick Claude 3.5 Haiku if

Claude 3.5 Haiku fits when…

  • Fast
  • Cheap for Anthropic
  • Strong code at small size
  • Long-context tasks, handles 200K tokens vs 128K for Llama 4 8B.
  • Multimodal needs covering vision.
Pick Llama 4 8B if

Llama 4 8B fits when…

  • Runs on consumer laptops
  • Broad tooling support
  • Apache-2-adjacent permissiveness for most uses
  • Self-hosting and on-prem requirements, open weights (Llama 4 Community License).
Don't want either?

Consider Claude Opus 4.7

Anthropic's mid-2026 flagship, ahead on SWE-bench, agent reliability, and writing quality.

See Claude Opus 4.7 specsClaude 3.5 Haiku vs Claude Opus 4.7Llama 4 8B vs Claude Opus 4.7

Frequently asked

  • Is Claude 3.5 Haiku or Llama 4 8B 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 128K for Llama 4 8B.
  • Is Claude 3.5 Haiku or Llama 4 8B better for coding?
    Both Claude 3.5 Haiku and Llama 4 8B 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?
    Llama 4 8B ships open weights (Llama 4 Community License). Claude 3.5 Haiku is API-only.
  • When were Claude 3.5 Haiku and Llama 4 8B released?
    Claude 3.5 Haiku was released by Anthropic on 2024-11-04. Llama 4 8B was released by Meta on 2025-04-05.
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