Noometry

Model comparison

Gemini 3 Flash Preview vs Llama 3.1-8B

Gemini 3 Flash Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 52.3 to 23.0 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3.1-8B costs 20× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 3 Flash Preview's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 25 shared benchmarks.

Gemini 3 Flash Preview Google

52.3

Rank #40 Confirmed

Llama 3.1-8B Meta

23.0

Rank #352 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 25 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemini 3 Flash Preview scores higher in 9 categories and Llama 3.1-8B in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads 58.8 to 8.0.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 95.6% for Gemini 3 Flash Preview and 1.7% for Llama 3.1-8B.
  • Llama 3.1-8B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $3 for Gemini 3 Flash Preview.
  • Gemini 3 Flash Preview accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 128K.
  • Llama 3.1-8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Gemini 3 Flash PreviewLlama 3.1-8B
ProviderGoogleMeta
Noometry Index52.323.0
Released2025-12-172024-07-23
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1.05M128K
Max output66K4K
Input $ / M tokens$0.50$0.05
Output $ / M tokens$3$0.08
Results tracked5943

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Category by category

Coding Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads

Gemini 3 Flash Preview: 50.9 (#42), Llama 3.1-8B: 20.2 (#340)

BenchmarkGemini 3 Flash PreviewLlama 3.1-8B
WeirdML61.6%1.7%
LMArena Coding14601195
SWE-bench Verified75.4%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)75.8%—
LMArena WebDev1439—
SWE-bench Multilingual72.7%—
SciCode—13.2%
GSO9.8%—
BigCodeBench Instruct—32.8%
BigCodeBench Complete—40.5%
ALE-Bench1,367—
HumanEval+—62.8%
MBPP+—55.6%

Agentic & Tool Use Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads

Gemini 3 Flash Preview: 38.7 (#29), Llama 3.1-8B: 22.5 (#131)

BenchmarkGemini 3 Flash PreviewLlama 3.1-8B
BALROG48.1%15.1%
Terminal-Bench64.3%—
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—25.8%
τ²-bench Airline82.5%—
τ²-bench Banking27.3%—
τ²-bench Retail76.8%—
τ²-bench Telecom91.2%—
DeepResearch Bench49.8%—
GDP.pdf10%—
LMArena Search1198—
Vending-Bench 23,635—

Reasoning Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads

Gemini 3 Flash Preview: 49.2 (#37), Llama 3.1-8B: 14.9 (#321)

BenchmarkGemini 3 Flash PreviewLlama 3.1-8B
Chess Puzzles40%0%
LMArena Hard Prompts14651175
DTBench89.1%50.9%
LMCA43.1%5.4%
Epoch Capabilities Index151.8116.57
ARC-AGI-233.6%—
SimpleBench61.1%—
NYT Connections (extended)83.1%—
ARC-AGI-184.7%—
CritPt—0%
Mystery Game Puzzles26%—
ForecastBench58.5—
PIQA—81.2%

Math Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads

Gemini 3 Flash Preview: 51.7 (#55), Llama 3.1-8B: 10.2 (#317)

BenchmarkGemini 3 Flash PreviewLlama 3.1-8B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202595.6%1.7%
LMArena Math14731179
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)51.2%—
FrontierMath Tier 417.1%—
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions67.6%—
ProofBench15%—
Omni-MATH—13.7%
MATH Level 5—22.9%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)35.6%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)4.2%—
GSM8K—82.4%

Knowledge Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads

Gemini 3 Flash Preview: 58.8 (#33), Llama 3.1-8B: 8.0 (#307)

BenchmarkGemini 3 Flash PreviewLlama 3.1-8B
GPQA Diamond89.4%27%
LMArena Expert14621144
SimpleQA Verified66.8%—
MMLU-Pro—40.6%
Vectara Hallucination Rate13.5%—
GPQA (HELM)—24.7%
BoolQ—82.8%
MMLU—56.1%

Multimodal Not comparable

Gemini 3 Flash Preview: 45.5 (#16), Llama 3.1-8B: —

BenchmarkGemini 3 Flash PreviewLlama 3.1-8B
LMArena Vision1285—
GeoBench88%—
VPCT72.6%—
Blueprint-Bench 20%—
LMArena Document1413—

Multilingual Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads

Gemini 3 Flash Preview: 55.7 (#27), Llama 3.1-8B: 34.0 (#249)

BenchmarkGemini 3 Flash PreviewLlama 3.1-8B
LMArena Non-English14581148
LMArena Chinese15111151
LMArena French14771177
LMArena German14971144
LMArena Japanese14891061
LMArena Korean14431053
LMArena Russian14801158
LMArena Spanish14691169

Instruction Following Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads

Gemini 3 Flash Preview: 75.7 (#56), Llama 3.1-8B: 58.9 (#258)

BenchmarkGemini 3 Flash PreviewLlama 3.1-8B
LMArena Instruction Following14371159
IFEval—74.3%

Long Context Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads

Gemini 3 Flash Preview: 44.4 (#67), Llama 3.1-8B: 35.8 (#238)

BenchmarkGemini 3 Flash PreviewLlama 3.1-8B
LMArena Longer Query14521182

Writing & Preference Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads

Gemini 3 Flash Preview: 65.5 (#45), Llama 3.1-8B: 29.7 (#290)

BenchmarkGemini 3 Flash PreviewLlama 3.1-8B
LMArena Text14661187
LMArena Creative Writing14571154
LMArena Multi-Turn14711172
EQ-Bench Creative Writing—713
WildBench—68.7%

Frequently asked questions

Is Gemini 3 Flash Preview better than Llama 3.1-8B?

Gemini 3 Flash Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 52.3 to 23.0 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3.1-8B costs 20× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 3 Flash Preview's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Gemini 3 Flash Preview or Llama 3.1-8B?

Llama 3.1-8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Gemini 3 Flash Preview lists at $0.50 and $3.

Is Gemini 3 Flash Preview or Llama 3.1-8B better for coding?

Gemini 3 Flash Preview scores higher on coding benchmarks: 50.9 versus 20.2 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Gemini 3 Flash Preview does, with 1.05M tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do Gemini 3 Flash Preview and Llama 3.1-8B share?

25 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemini 3 Flash Preview has 59 scored results on Noometry and Llama 3.1-8B has 43.

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