Claude 3 Sonnet vs Llama 3.1 8B Instruct Comparison

Comparing Claude 3 Sonnet and Llama 3.1 8B Instruct across benchmarks, pricing, and capabilities.

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Performance Benchmarks

Comparative analysis across standard metrics

6 benchmarks

Claude 3 Sonnet outperforms in 6 benchmarks (ARC-C, DROP, GPQA, HumanEval, MMLU, MMLU-Pro), while Llama 3.1 8B Instruct is better at 0 benchmarks.

Claude 3 Sonnet significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Wed Mar 18 2026 • llm-stats.com

Arena Performance

Human preference votes

Pricing Analysis

Price comparison per million tokens

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct costs less

For input processing, Claude 3 Sonnet ($3.00/1M tokens) is 100.0x more expensive than Llama 3.1 8B Instruct ($0.03/1M tokens).

For output processing, Claude 3 Sonnet ($15.00/1M tokens) is 500.0x more expensive than Llama 3.1 8B Instruct ($0.03/1M tokens).

In conclusion, Claude 3 Sonnet is more expensive than Llama 3.1 8B Instruct.*

* Using a 3:1 ratio of input to output tokens

Lowest available price from all providers

Wed Mar 18 2026 • llm-stats.com

Claude 3 Sonnet

Input tokens$3.00

Output tokens$15.00

Best providerAnthropic

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct

Input tokens$0.03

Output tokens$0.03

Best providerLambda

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Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Claude 3 Sonnet accepts 200,000 input tokens compared to Llama 3.1 8B Instruct's 131,072 tokens. Claude 3 Sonnet can generate longer responses up to 200,000 tokens, while Llama 3.1 8B Instruct is limited to 131,072 tokens.

Claude 3 Sonnet

Input200,000 tokens

Output200,000 tokens

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct

Input131,072 tokens

Output131,072 tokens

Wed Mar 18 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input Capabilities

Supported data types and modalities

Claude 3 Sonnet supports multimodal inputs, whereas Llama 3.1 8B Instruct does not.

Claude 3 Sonnet can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Claude 3 Sonnet

Text

Images

Audio

Video

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct

Text

Images

Audio

Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Claude 3 Sonnet is licensed under a proprietary license, while Llama 3.1 8B Instruct uses Llama 3.1 Community License.

License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.

Claude 3 Sonnet

Proprietary

Closed source

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct

Llama 3.1 Community License

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Claude 3 Sonnet was released on 2024-02-29, while Llama 3.1 8B Instruct was released on 2024-07-23.

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct is 5 months newer than Claude 3 Sonnet.

Claude 3 Sonnet

Feb 29, 2024

2.0 years ago

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct

Jul 23, 2024

1.7 years ago

4mo newer

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct has a documented knowledge cutoff of 2023-12-31, while Claude 3 Sonnet's cutoff date is not specified.

We can confirm Llama 3.1 8B Instruct's training data extends to 2023-12-31, but cannot make a direct comparison without Claude 3 Sonnet's cutoff date.

Claude 3 Sonnet

—

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct

Dec 2023

Provider Availability

Claude 3 Sonnet is available from Anthropic, Bedrock, Google. Llama 3.1 8B Instruct is available from Lambda, DeepInfra, Groq, Sambanova, Cerebras, Hyperbolic, Together, Fireworks, Bedrock. The availability of providers can affect quality of the model and reliability.