# Llama 3.1-8B vs o4-mini

> o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 22.8 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3.1-8B costs 33× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o4-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/llama-3-1-8b-vs-o4-mini
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 32

## Summary

- They share 32 benchmarks with published results for both. Llama 3.1-8B scores higher in 0 categories and o4-mini in 9 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where o4-mini leads 43.5 to 8.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 1.7% for Llama 3.1-8B and 81.7% for o4-mini.
- Llama 3.1-8B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $1.10 / $4.40 for o4-mini.
- o4-mini accepts more context: 200K tokens versus 128K.
- Llama 3.1-8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Llama 3.1-8B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Meta | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 22.8 | 41.6 |
| Rank | 347 | 119 |
| Context | 128K | 200K |
| Input $/M | $0.05 | $1.10 |
| Output $/M | $0.08 | $4.40 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Llama 3.1-8B: 19.9 (#335)
- o4-mini: 41.6 (#110)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-8B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| WeirdML | 1.7% | 52.6% |
| LMArena Coding | 1195 | 1369 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 45% |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 72% |
| SciCode | 13.2% | — |
| GSO | — | 3.6% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 32.8% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 40.5% | — |
| CadEval | — | 62% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 826.17 |
| AlgoTune | — | 1.72 |
| HumanEval+ | 62.8% | — |
| MBPP+ | 55.6% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Llama 3.1-8B: 22.3 (#123)
- o4-mini: 32.3 (#57)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-8B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 25.8% | 53.2% |
| GDPval | — | 25.3% |
| BALROG | 15.1% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 63.9% |

## Reasoning

- Llama 3.1-8B: 14.5 (#316)
- o4-mini: 24.6 (#143)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-8B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0% | 0.6% |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | 26% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1175 | 1351 |
| DTBench | 50.9% | 77.6% |
| LMCA | 5.4% | 26.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 116.48 | 145.63 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 6.1% |
| SimpleBench | — | 38.7% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 67.6% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 58.7% |
| EnigmaEval | — | 9.2% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 5% |
| ForecastBench | — | 61.8 |
| PIQA | 81.2% | — |

## Math

- Llama 3.1-8B: 9.5 (#311)
- o4-mini: 40.2 (#79)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-8B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 1.7% | 81.7% |
| Omni-MATH | 13.7% | 72% |
| LMArena Math | 1179 | 1390 |
| MATH Level 5 | 22.9% | 97.8% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 36.1% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 4.9% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 24.8% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 6.3% |
| GSM8K | 82.4% | — |

## Knowledge

- Llama 3.1-8B: 8.0 (#302)
- o4-mini: 43.5 (#83)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-8B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 27% | 79.6% |
| MMLU-Pro | 40.6% | 82% |
| GPQA (HELM) | 24.7% | 73.5% |
| LMArena Expert | 1144 | 1344 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | — | 18.1% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 19.6% |
| Confabulations | — | 15.8% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 18.6% |
| BoolQ | 82.8% | — |
| MMLU | 56.1% | — |

## Multimodal

- Llama 3.1-8B: —
- o4-mini: 39.5 (#46)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-8B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1194 |
| GeoBench | — | 64% |
| VPCT | — | 57.5% |

## Multilingual

- Llama 3.1-8B: 34.2 (#244)
- o4-mini: 47.2 (#149)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-8B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1148 | 1336 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1151 | 1355 |
| LMArena French | 1176 | 1362 |
| LMArena German | 1144 | 1336 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1061 | 1308 |
| LMArena Korean | 1053 | 1313 |
| LMArena Russian | 1158 | 1334 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1169 | 1346 |

## Instruction Following

- Llama 3.1-8B: 59.1 (#253)
- o4-mini: 75.4 (#63)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-8B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 74.3% | 92.8% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1159 | 1321 |

## Long Context

- Llama 3.1-8B: 35.8 (#233)
- o4-mini: 45.5 (#31)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-8B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1182 | 1315 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 77.8% |

## Writing & Preference

- Llama 3.1-8B: 29.9 (#285)
- o4-mini: 54.2 (#148)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-8B | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1187 | 1353 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1154 | 1294 |
| WildBench | 68.7% | 85.4% |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1172 | 1350 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 75% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 713 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Llama 3.1-8B better than o4-mini?

o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 22.8 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3.1-8B costs 33× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o4-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Llama 3.1-8B or o4-mini?

Llama 3.1-8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; o4-mini lists at $1.10 and $4.40.

### Is Llama 3.1-8B or o4-mini better for coding?

o4-mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.6 versus 19.9 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

o4-mini does, with 200K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Llama 3.1-8B and o4-mini share?

32 benchmarks have published results for both models. Llama 3.1-8B has 43 scored results on Noometry and o4-mini has 60.