Llama 3.1 8B vs NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Side-by-side comparison of API pricing, specs, benchmarks, and capabilities
| Specification |
by Meta
|
by DeepInfra
|
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Status | Current open weights Open weights | Current open weights Open weights |
| Released | Jul 23, 2024 | Aug 11, 2026 |
| Pricing per million tokens | ||
| Input | $0.050/Mtok | $0.080/Mtok |
| Output | $0.080/Mtok | $0.200/Mtok |
| Blended avg | $0.058/Mtok | $0.110/Mtok |
| Cached input | — | $0.040/Mtok |
| Specifications | ||
| Context window | 128K tokens | 256K tokens |
| Parameters | 8B | 30B (3B active) |
| Speed (TPS) | — | — |
| Modalities | ||
| Input |
text
|
text
|
| Benchmarks sources: Vellum LLM Leaderboard (Jun 2026), Kaggle dataset / Artificial Analysis | ||
| Avg benchmark score | 34 | — |
| Perf / dollar | 591.3 | — |
| GPQA Diamond | 30 | — |
| SWE-Bench Verified | 12 | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 5 | — |
| ARC-AGI 2 | 6 | — |
| AIME 2025 | 20 | — |
| MMMLU | 65 | — |
| BFCL | 48 | — |
| HumanEval | 72 | — |
| MATH 500 | 48 | — |
| Independent composite scores each on its own scale — not part of the average above | ||
| AA Intelligence Index | — | 23.6 |
| AA Agentic Index | — | 13.8 |
| AA-Omniscience Index (−100–100) | — | -17.7 |
| Providers | ||
| Available from |
Meta — $0.050/$0.080/Mtok
|
DeepInfra — $0.080/$0.200/Mtok
|
Cost at scale
1M tokens · 50/50 input/output| Volume | Llama 3.1 8B | NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1M tokens | $0.06 | $0.11 | $0.05 (45.5%) |
| 10M tokens | $0.58 | $1.1 | $0.53 (48.2%) |
| 100M tokens | $5.75 | $11 | $5.25 (47.7%) |
| 1000M tokens | $57.5 | $110 | $52.5 (47.7%) |
When to pick which
distilled from the pricing and spec data above- cost dominates: $0.058/Mtok blended vs $0.110 — 47.7% less on the same 50/50 token mix
- your workload re-reads context (agents, RAG, long chats): cached input costs $0.040/Mtok — 50% off its list input price, a discount Llama 3.1 8B doesn't offer
- you need the longer context: 256K tokens vs 128K (2×)
Summary
Llama 3.1 8B by Meta costs $0.050/Mtok input and $0.080/Mtok output, with a 128K-token context window. It supports text input.
NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning by DeepInfra costs $0.080/Mtok input and $0.200/Mtok output, with a 256K-token context window. It supports text input.
On a blended cost basis, Llama 3.1 8B is 47.7% cheaper than NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning.
The two aren't directly comparable on average benchmark score: Llama 3.1 8B has published per-benchmark results, while NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning does not yet — it is measured today on independent composites (see the table above).
Note: Pricing is per million tokens. Actual costs vary with usage patterns, prompt caching, and batch discounts. Always verify against official provider pricing pages.