# Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite vs Llama 3-8B

> Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.8 to 25.3 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3-8B costs 6.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gemini-3-5-flash-lite-vs-llama-3-8b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 22

## Summary

- They share 22 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite scores higher in 8 categories and Llama 3-8B in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite leads 50.0 to 7.8.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 71.1% for Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and 1.9% for Llama 3-8B.
- Llama 3-8B is cheaper at $0.14 / $0.14 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $2.50 for Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 8K.
- Llama 3-8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google | Meta |
| Noometry Index | 41.8 | 25.3 |
| Rank | 113 | 338 |
| Context | 1.05M | 8K |
| Input $/M | $0.30 | $0.14 |
| Output $/M | $2.50 | $0.14 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 42.1 (#96)
- Llama 3-8B: 30.5 (#285)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1455 | 1152 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1440 | — |
| SciCode | 41.3% | — |
| WeirdML | 39% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 31.9% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 36.9% |
| ALE-Bench | 765.27 | — |
| HumanEval+ | — | 56.7% |
| MBPP+ | — | 54.8% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 28.6 (#82)
- Llama 3-8B: —

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| GDP.pdf | 10% | — |

## Reasoning

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 27.8 (#95)
- Llama 3-8B: 13.8 (#321)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 22% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1441 | 1133 |
| DTBench | 83.5% | 43.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 145.12 | 116.33 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 10.3% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 60.4% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 53.5% | — |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 19% | — |
| LMCA | 37.6% | — |
| Adversarial NLI | — | 57.3% |
| ForecastBench | — | 58.6 |
| WinoGrande | — | 75.7% |

## Math

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 25.7 (#245)
- Llama 3-8B: 8.3 (#317)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 71.1% | 1.9% |
| LMArena Math | 1431 | 1151 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 26% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 0% | — |
| ProofBench | 13% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 6.1% |

## Knowledge

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 50.0 (#66)
- Llama 3-8B: 7.8 (#303)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 83.3% | 26.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1430 | 1113 |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 82.8% |
| MMLU | — | 68.8% |
| OpenBookQA | — | 82.6% |
| TriviaQA | — | 67.7% |

## Multimodal

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 40.3 (#38)
- Llama 3-8B: —

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1266 | — |

## Multilingual

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 53.8 (#59)
- Llama 3-8B: 31.0 (#256)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1428 | 1098 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1467 | 1076 |
| LMArena French | 1452 | 1158 |
| LMArena German | 1454 | 1104 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1428 | 967 |
| LMArena Korean | 1406 | 1003 |
| LMArena Russian | 1443 | 1109 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1440 | 1172 |

## Instruction Following

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 75.0 (#77)
- Llama 3-8B: 58.7 (#255)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1420 | 1127 |

## Long Context

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 43.8 (#80)
- Llama 3-8B: 34.2 (#246)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1435 | 1128 |

## Writing & Preference

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 64.4 (#55)
- Llama 3-8B: 37.7 (#251)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1436 | 1166 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1419 | 1150 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1445 | 1152 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1559 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite better than Llama 3-8B?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.8 to 25.3 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3-8B costs 6.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite 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; Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite lists at $0.30 and $2.50.

### Is Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite or Llama 3-8B better for coding?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.1 versus 30.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite does, with 1.05M tokens against 8K.

### How many benchmarks do Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and Llama 3-8B share?

22 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite has 38 scored results on Noometry and Llama 3-8B has 34.
