Noometry

Model comparison

GPT-4.1 mini vs Llama 3-8B

GPT-4.1 mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.5 to 25.3 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3-8B costs 5.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-4.1 mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 24 shared benchmarks.

GPT-4.1 mini OpenAI

33.5

Rank #232 Confirmed

Llama 3-8B Meta

25.3

Rank #338 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 24 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-4.1 mini scores higher in 5 categories and Llama 3-8B in 3 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where GPT-4.1 mini leads 34.7 to 7.8.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is MATH Level 5: 87.3% for GPT-4.1 mini and 6.1% for Llama 3-8B.
  • Llama 3-8B is cheaper at $0.14 / $0.14 per million input/output tokens, against $0.40 / $1.60 for GPT-4.1 mini.
  • GPT-4.1 mini accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 8K.
  • Llama 3-8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

GPT-4.1 miniLlama 3-8B
ProviderOpenAIMeta
Noometry Index33.525.3
Released2025-04-142024-04-18
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1.05M8K
Max output33K8K
Input $ / M tokens$0.40$0.14
Output $ / M tokens$1.60$0.14
Results tracked4734

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Category by category

Coding Too close to call

GPT-4.1 mini: 30.4 (#286), Llama 3-8B: 30.5 (#285)

BenchmarkGPT-4.1 miniLlama 3-8B
BigCodeBench Instruct48.9%31.9%
LMArena Coding13671152
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)23.9%—
Aider Polyglot32.4%—
SciCode40.4%—
WeirdML37.6%—
BigCodeBench Complete—36.9%
CadEval16%—
HumanEval+—56.7%
MBPP+—54.8%

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

GPT-4.1 mini: 33.0 (#52), Llama 3-8B: —

BenchmarkGPT-4.1 miniLlama 3-8B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard50.5%—

Reasoning Llama 3-8B leads

GPT-4.1 mini: 10.9 (#335), Llama 3-8B: 13.8 (#321)

BenchmarkGPT-4.1 miniLlama 3-8B
Chess Puzzles7%0%
LMArena Hard Prompts13491133
DTBench68.8%43.9%
Epoch Capabilities Index135.01116.33
ARC-AGI-20%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark48.6%—
ARC-AGI-13.5%—
CritPt0%—
Mystery Game Puzzles7%—
LMCA21.1%—
Adversarial NLI—57.3%
ForecastBench—58.6
WinoGrande—75.7%

Math GPT-4.1 mini leads

GPT-4.1 mini: 23.1 (#264), Llama 3-8B: 8.3 (#317)

BenchmarkGPT-4.1 miniLlama 3-8B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202544.7%1.9%
LMArena Math13431151
MATH Level 587.3%6.1%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)6.7%—
Omni-MATH49.1%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)4.5%—

Knowledge GPT-4.1 mini leads

GPT-4.1 mini: 34.7 (#183), Llama 3-8B: 7.8 (#303)

BenchmarkGPT-4.1 miniLlama 3-8B
GPQA Diamond65.8%26.1%
LMArena Expert13381113
SimpleQA Verified12.7%—
MMLU-Pro78.3%—
GPQA (HELM)61.4%—
ARC (AI2) Challenge—82.8%
MMLU—68.8%
OpenBookQA—82.6%
TriviaQA—67.7%

Multimodal Not comparable

GPT-4.1 mini: 35.2 (#77), Llama 3-8B: —

BenchmarkGPT-4.1 miniLlama 3-8B
LMArena Vision1181—

Multilingual GPT-4.1 mini leads

GPT-4.1 mini: 45.9 (#161), Llama 3-8B: 31.0 (#256)

BenchmarkGPT-4.1 miniLlama 3-8B
LMArena Non-English13181098
LMArena Chinese13291076
LMArena French13571158
LMArena German13491104
LMArena Japanese1291967
LMArena Korean12981003
LMArena Russian13241109
LMArena Spanish13191172

Instruction Following GPT-4.1 mini leads

GPT-4.1 mini: 73.9 (#113), Llama 3-8B: 58.7 (#255)

BenchmarkGPT-4.1 miniLlama 3-8B
LMArena Instruction Following13321127
IFEval90.4%—

Long Context Llama 3-8B leads

GPT-4.1 mini: 31.8 (#270), Llama 3-8B: 34.2 (#246)

BenchmarkGPT-4.1 miniLlama 3-8B
LMArena Longer Query13441128
Fiction.LiveBench44.4%—

Writing & Preference GPT-4.1 mini leads

GPT-4.1 mini: 48.8 (#193), Llama 3-8B: 37.7 (#251)

BenchmarkGPT-4.1 miniLlama 3-8B
LMArena Text13411166
LMArena Creative Writing13001150
LMArena Multi-Turn13541152
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1147—
WildBench83.8%—

Frequently asked questions

Is GPT-4.1 mini better than Llama 3-8B?

GPT-4.1 mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.5 to 25.3 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3-8B costs 5.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-4.1 mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, GPT-4.1 mini or Llama 3-8B?

Llama 3-8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.14 per million input tokens and $0.14 per million output tokens; GPT-4.1 mini lists at $0.40 and $1.60.

Is GPT-4.1 mini or Llama 3-8B better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (30.4 vs 30.5); test both on your own repository before choosing.

Which has the bigger context window?

GPT-4.1 mini does, with 1.05M tokens against 8K.

How many benchmarks do GPT-4.1 mini and Llama 3-8B share?

24 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-4.1 mini has 47 scored results on Noometry and Llama 3-8B has 34.

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