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DeepSeek-V3 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

DeepSeek-V3 specs · Llama 4 8B specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceDeepSeek-V3

    DeepSeek-V3 publishes pricing ($1.10 / 1M output tokens) while Llama 4 8B does not.

  • Context windowTie

    Both ship a 128K-token context window.

  • 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 DeepSeek-V3 edges ahead, winning 1 of 5 categories against Llama 4 8B's 0. DeepSeek-V3 publishes pricing ($1.10 / 1M output tokens) while Llama 4 8B does not. Both ship a 128K-token context window.

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.

Llama 4 8B is the newer of the two, released 3 months after DeepSeek-V3, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. DeepSeek-V3 is usually picked for open source llm and commercial use llm 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

SpecDeepSeek-V3Llama 4 8B
ProviderDeepSeekMeta
ReleasedDec 2024Apr 2025
Modalitiestexttext
Context window128K tokens128K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1M$0.27 / 1M tokensPricing not published
Output · 1M$1.10 / 1M tokensPricing not published
Knowledge cutoff2024-07,
Open weightsYes (MIT)Yes (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$2.46 vs ,
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day$24.60 vs ,
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day$47.10 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.

  • DeepSeek-V3$0.082
  • 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.

DeepSeek-V3Llama 4 8B
  • MMLU88.5
  • HumanEval90.0
Pick DeepSeek-V3 if

DeepSeek-V3 fits when…

  • Frontier-level quality at open-weight prices
  • MIT license, clean commercial use
  • Cheap to serve via MoE architecture
Pick Llama 4 8B if

Llama 4 8B fits when…

  • Runs on consumer laptops
  • Broad tooling support
  • Apache-2-adjacent permissiveness for most uses
Don't want either?

Consider DeepSeek-R1

First open-weight reasoning model to match o1, the release that proved RL-from-scratch reasoning training was reproducible.

See DeepSeek-R1 specsDeepSeek-V3 vs DeepSeek-R1Llama 4 8B vs DeepSeek-R1

Frequently asked

  • Is DeepSeek-V3 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?
    Both DeepSeek-V3 and Llama 4 8B ship a 128K-token context window.
  • Is DeepSeek-V3 or Llama 4 8B better for coding?
    Both DeepSeek-V3 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?
    Both ship with open weights. DeepSeek-V3 is licensed under MIT; Llama 4 8B under Llama 4 Community License.
  • When were DeepSeek-V3 and Llama 4 8B released?
    DeepSeek-V3 was released by DeepSeek on 2024-12-26. Llama 4 8B was released by Meta on 2025-04-05.
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