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Llama 4 8B vs o4-mini

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 · o4-mini specs
Verdict by category
  • Priceo4-mini

    o4-mini publishes pricing ($4.40 / 1M output tokens) while Llama 4 8B does not.

  • Context windowo4-mini

    o4-mini 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.

  • Modalitieso4-mini

    o4-mini supports 2 modalities (text, vision) vs 1 for Llama 4 8B.

  • OpennessLlama 4 8B

    Llama 4 8B ships open weights (Llama 4 Community License); o4-mini is API-only.

On balance o4-mini edges ahead, winning 3 of 5 categories against Llama 4 8B's 1. o4-mini publishes pricing ($4.40 / 1M output tokens) while Llama 4 8B does not. o4-mini 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 o4-mini 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); o4-mini 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 o4-mini 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

SpecLlama 4 8Bo4-mini
ProviderMetaOpenAI
ReleasedApr 2025Apr 2025
Modalitiestexttext, vision
Context window128K tokens200K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1MPricing not published$1.10 / 1M tokens
Output · 1MPricing not published$4.40 / 1M tokens
Knowledge cutoff,2024-06
Open weightsYes (Llama 4 Community License)No
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 $9.90
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day, vs $99.00
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day, vs $191

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 4 8BPricing unavailable
  • o4-mini$0.330

Benchmarks compared

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

Llama 4 8Bo4-mini
  • GPQA,81.4
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).
Pick o4-mini if

o4-mini fits when…

  • Strong reasoning at mid-tier price
  • Fast for a thinking model
  • Solid tool-use
  • Long-context tasks, handles 200K tokens vs 128K for Llama 4 8B.
  • Multimodal needs covering vision.
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 4 8B vs Llama 4 405Bo4-mini vs Llama 4 405B

Frequently asked

  • Is Llama 4 8B or o4-mini 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?
    o4-mini accepts 200K tokens vs 128K for Llama 4 8B.
  • Is Llama 4 8B or o4-mini better for coding?
    Both Llama 4 8B and o4-mini 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). o4-mini is API-only.
  • When were Llama 4 8B and o4-mini released?
    Llama 4 8B was released by Meta on 2025-04-05. o4-mini was released by OpenAI on 2025-04-16.
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