Llama 4 8B vs o3
A complete head-to-head: pricing, context window, benchmarks, modality coverage, and openness, with a programmatic verdict synthesized from the underlying data.
Updated
Llama 4 8B specs · o3 specs- Priceo3
o3 publishes pricing ($8.00 / 1M output tokens) while Llama 4 8B does not.
- Context windowo3
o3 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.
- Modalitieso3
o3 supports 2 modalities (text, vision) vs 1 for Llama 4 8B.
- OpennessLlama 4 8B
Llama 4 8B ships open weights (Llama 4 Community License); o3 is API-only.
On balance o3 edges ahead, winning 3 of 5 categories against Llama 4 8B's 1. o3 publishes pricing ($8.00 / 1M output tokens) while Llama 4 8B does not. o3 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, Llama 4 8B handles text while o3 handles text, vision, which can be the deciding factor before you even look at benchmarks. Llama 4 8B ships open weights (Llama 4 Community License); o3 is API-only.
Both shipped within roughly a month of each other in 2025, so they share the same generation of training data and tooling. Llama 4 8B is usually picked for local llm and on device workloads, while o3 sees more deployments in reasoning and math. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.
Side-by-side specs
| Spec | Llama 4 8B | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Meta | OpenAI |
| Released | Apr 2025 | Apr 2025 |
| Modalities | text | text, vision |
| Context window | 128K tokens | 200K tokens |
| Max output | , | , |
| Input · 1M | Pricing not published | $2.00 / 1M tokens |
| Output · 1M | Pricing not published | $8.00 / 1M tokens |
| Knowledge cutoff | , | 2024-06 |
| Open weights | Yes (Llama 4 Community License) | 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 $18.00
- Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day, vs $180
- RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day, vs $348
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.
- Llama 4 8BPricing unavailable
- o3$0.600
Benchmarks compared
Only sourced numbers. Where a benchmark is missing for one model we show the available value rather than fabricating the other.
- HumanEval,95.0
- GPQA,87.7
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).
o3 fits when…
- Industry-leading reasoning depth at launch
- Strong on math, science, and abstract puzzles
- Tool-use during reasoning loops
- Long-context tasks, handles 200K tokens vs 128K for Llama 4 8B.
- Multimodal needs covering vision.
Consider Llama 4 405B
Meta's flagship open-weight model, sparse MoE design competitive with closed-frontier flagships.
Frequently asked
Is Llama 4 8B or o3 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?
o3 accepts 200K tokens vs 128K for Llama 4 8B.Is Llama 4 8B or o3 better for coding?
Both Llama 4 8B and o3 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). o3 is API-only.When were Llama 4 8B and o3 released?
Llama 4 8B was released by Meta on 2025-04-05. o3 was released by OpenAI on 2025-04-16.
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