# Llama 2-13B vs Llama 3-8B

> Llama 2-13B is the stronger model overall, scoring 29.1 to 25.3 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/llama-2-13b-vs-llama-3-8b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 25

## Summary

- They share 25 benchmarks with published results for both. Llama 2-13B scores higher in 2 categories and Llama 3-8B in 6 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Llama 2-13B leads 28.7 to 8.3.

## Snapshot

| | Llama 2-13B | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Meta | Meta |
| Noometry Index | 29.1 | 25.3 |
| Rank | 304 | 338 |
| Context | — | 8K |
| Input $/M | — | $0.14 |
| Output $/M | — | $0.14 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Llama 2-13B: 30.4 (#287)
- Llama 3-8B: 30.5 (#285)

| Benchmark | Llama 2-13B | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1062 | 1152 |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 31.9% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 36.9% |
| HumanEval+ | — | 56.7% |
| MBPP+ | — | 54.8% |

## Reasoning

- Llama 2-13B: 12.3 (#333)
- Llama 3-8B: 13.8 (#321)

| Benchmark | Llama 2-13B | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1051 | 1133 |
| DTBench | 42.2% | 43.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 105.8 | 116.33 |
| WinoGrande | 72.8% | 75.7% |
| Adversarial NLI | — | 57.3% |
| BIG-Bench Hard | 58.2% | — |
| ForecastBench | — | 58.6 |
| HellaSwag | 80.7% | — |
| LAMBADA | 76.5% | — |
| PIQA | 80.8% | — |

## Math

- Llama 2-13B: 28.7 (#226)
- Llama 3-8B: 8.3 (#317)

| Benchmark | Llama 2-13B | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1065 | 1151 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 1.9% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 6.1% |
| GSM8K | 36.9% | — |

## Knowledge

- Llama 2-13B: 27.5 (#244)
- Llama 3-8B: 7.8 (#303)

| Benchmark | Llama 2-13B | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1030 | 1113 |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | 60.3% | 82.8% |
| MMLU | 55.6% | 68.8% |
| OpenBookQA | 57% | 82.6% |
| TriviaQA | 79.6% | 67.7% |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 26.1% |
| BoolQ | 82.4% | — |

## Multimodal

- Llama 2-13B: —
- Llama 3-8B: —

| Benchmark | Llama 2-13B | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| ScienceQA | 55.8% | — |

## Multilingual

- Llama 2-13B: 26.7 (#274)
- Llama 3-8B: 31.0 (#256)

| Benchmark | Llama 2-13B | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1024 | 1098 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1001 | 1076 |
| LMArena French | 1043 | 1158 |
| LMArena German | 1009 | 1104 |
| LMArena Japanese | 894 | 967 |
| LMArena Korean | 953 | 1003 |
| LMArena Russian | 1055 | 1109 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1086 | 1172 |

## Instruction Following

- Llama 2-13B: 53.5 (#282)
- Llama 3-8B: 58.7 (#255)

| Benchmark | Llama 2-13B | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1046 | 1127 |

## Long Context

- Llama 2-13B: 32.3 (#264)
- Llama 3-8B: 34.2 (#246)

| Benchmark | Llama 2-13B | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1064 | 1128 |

## Writing & Preference

- Llama 2-13B: 30.0 (#284)
- Llama 3-8B: 37.7 (#251)

| Benchmark | Llama 2-13B | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1085 | 1166 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1047 | 1150 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1050 | 1152 |

## FAQ

### Is Llama 2-13B better than Llama 3-8B?

Llama 2-13B is the stronger model overall, scoring 29.1 to 25.3 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Llama 2-13B 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.

### How many benchmarks do Llama 2-13B and Llama 3-8B share?

25 benchmarks have published results for both models. Llama 2-13B has 32 scored results on Noometry and Llama 3-8B has 34.