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Llama 3.3 70B 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

Llama 3.3 70B specs · Phi-3.5 Medium specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceTie

    Neither model publishes per-token API pricing.

  • Context windowTie

    Both ship a 128K-token context window.

  • BenchmarksLlama 3.3 70B

    Llama 3.3 70B leads in 1 of 1 shared benchmarks; the biggest gap is on MMLU (broad academic knowledge), where it scores 86.0 vs 78.9.

  • ModalitiesTie

    Both handle text.

  • OpennessTie

    Both ship open weights, self-host either one.

On balance Llama 3.3 70B edges ahead, winning 1 of 5 categories against Phi-3.5 Medium's 0. Neither model publishes per-token API pricing. Both ship a 128K-token context window.

Llama 3.3 70B leads in 1 of 1 shared benchmarks; the biggest gap is on MMLU (broad academic knowledge), where it scores 86.0 vs 78.9. 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 3.3 70B is the newer of the two, released 4 months after Phi-3.5 Medium, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Llama 3.3 70B is usually picked for open source llm and edge deployment 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

SpecLlama 3.3 70BPhi-3.5 Medium
ProviderMetaMicrosoft
ReleasedDec 2024Aug 2024
Modalitiestexttext
Context window128K tokens128K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1MPricing not publishedPricing not published
Output · 1MPricing not publishedPricing not published
Knowledge cutoff,,
Open weightsYes (Llama 3 Community License)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.

  • Llama 3.3 70BPricing 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.

Llama 3.3 70BPhi-3.5 Medium
  • MMLU86.078.9
Pick Llama 3.3 70B if

Llama 3.3 70B fits when…

  • Mature, well-tuned
  • 70B fits on a single H100
  • Wide tooling
Pick Phi-3.5 Medium if

Phi-3.5 Medium fits when…

  • MIT license
  • 128k context
  • Strong reasoning at 14B
Don't want either?

Consider Llama 4 405B

Meta's flagship open-weight model, sparse MoE design competitive with closed-frontier flagships.

See Llama 4 405B specsLlama 3.3 70B vs Llama 4 405BPhi-3.5 Medium vs Llama 4 405B

Frequently asked

  • Is Llama 3.3 70B 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?
    Both Llama 3.3 70B and Phi-3.5 Medium ship a 128K-token context window.
  • Is Llama 3.3 70B or Phi-3.5 Medium better for coding?
    Both Llama 3.3 70B 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. Llama 3.3 70B is licensed under Llama 3 Community License; Phi-3.5 Medium under MIT.
  • When were Llama 3.3 70B and Phi-3.5 Medium released?
    Llama 3.3 70B was released by Meta on 2024-12-06. Phi-3.5 Medium was released by Microsoft on 2024-08-20.
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