# Llama 3.2 3B vs Llama 3-8B

> Llama 3.2 3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 28.4 to 25.3 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/llama-3-2-3b-vs-llama-3-8b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 15

## Summary

- They share 15 benchmarks with published results for both. Llama 3.2 3B scores higher in 3 categories and Llama 3-8B in 5 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Llama 3.2 3B leads 29.9 to 8.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is BigCodeBench Complete: 28.3% for Llama 3.2 3B and 36.9% for Llama 3-8B.
- Llama 3.2 3B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.33 per million input/output tokens, against $0.14 / $0.14 for Llama 3-8B.
- Llama 3.2 3B accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 8K.

## Snapshot

| | Llama 3.2 3B | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Meta | Meta |
| Noometry Index | 28.4 | 25.3 |
| Rank | 318 | 338 |
| Context | 131K | 8K |
| Input $/M | $0.05 | $0.14 |
| Output $/M | $0.33 | $0.14 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Llama 3.2 3B: 27.1 (#314)
- Llama 3-8B: 30.5 (#285)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 23.4% | 31.9% |
| LMArena Coding | 1098 | 1152 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 28.3% | 36.9% |
| HumanEval+ | — | 56.7% |
| MBPP+ | — | 54.8% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Llama 3.2 3B: 19.9 (#135)
- Llama 3-8B: —

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 21.9% | — |
| BALROG | 10.1% | — |

## Reasoning

- Llama 3.2 3B: 20.1 (#225)
- Llama 3-8B: 13.8 (#321)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1095 | 1133 |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| DTBench | — | 43.9% |
| Adversarial NLI | — | 57.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 116.33 |
| ForecastBench | — | 58.6 |
| WinoGrande | — | 75.7% |

## Math

- Llama 3.2 3B: 29.9 (#213)
- Llama 3-8B: 8.3 (#317)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1126 | 1151 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 1.9% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 6.1% |

## Knowledge

- Llama 3.2 3B: 29.1 (#232)
- Llama 3-8B: 7.8 (#303)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1090 | 1113 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 26.1% |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 82.8% |
| MMLU | — | 68.8% |
| OpenBookQA | — | 82.6% |
| TriviaQA | — | 67.7% |

## Multilingual

- Llama 3.2 3B: 26.4 (#276)
- Llama 3-8B: 31.0 (#256)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1019 | 1098 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1017 | 1076 |
| LMArena German | 1056 | 1104 |
| LMArena Russian | 949 | 1109 |
| LMArena French | — | 1158 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 967 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1003 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1172 |

## Instruction Following

- Llama 3.2 3B: 56.3 (#270)
- Llama 3-8B: 58.7 (#255)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1089 | 1127 |

## Long Context

- Llama 3.2 3B: 33.4 (#256)
- Llama 3-8B: 34.2 (#246)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1101 | 1128 |

## Writing & Preference

- Llama 3.2 3B: 24.9 (#302)
- Llama 3-8B: 37.7 (#251)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1110 | 1166 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1094 | 1150 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1105 | 1152 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 595 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Llama 3.2 3B better than Llama 3-8B?

Llama 3.2 3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 28.4 to 25.3 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Llama 3.2 3B or Llama 3-8B?

Llama 3.2 3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.33 per million output tokens; Llama 3-8B lists at $0.14 and $0.14.

### Is Llama 3.2 3B or Llama 3-8B better for coding?

Llama 3-8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 30.5 versus 27.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Llama 3.2 3B does, with 131K tokens against 8K.

### How many benchmarks do Llama 3.2 3B and Llama 3-8B share?

15 benchmarks have published results for both models. Llama 3.2 3B has 18 scored results on Noometry and Llama 3-8B has 34.