# Llama 3-8B vs MiniMax M1

> MiniMax M1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.7 to 25.3 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3-8B costs 6.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when MiniMax M1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/llama-3-8b-vs-minimax-m1
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Llama 3-8B scores higher in 0 categories and MiniMax M1 in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where MiniMax M1 leads 35.7 to 7.8.
- Llama 3-8B is cheaper at $0.14 / $0.14 per million input/output tokens, against $0.40 / $2.20 for MiniMax M1.
- MiniMax M1 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 8K.

## Snapshot

| | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Meta | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 25.3 | 39.7 |
| Rank | 338 | 146 |
| Context | 8K | 1M |
| Input $/M | $0.14 | $0.40 |
| Output $/M | $0.14 | $2.20 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Llama 3-8B: 30.5 (#285)
- MiniMax M1: 39.2 (#149)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1152 | 1359 |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 31.9% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 36.9% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 56.7% | — |
| MBPP+ | 54.8% | — |

## Reasoning

- Llama 3-8B: 13.8 (#321)
- MiniMax M1: 25.8 (#125)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1133 | 1340 |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| DTBench | 43.9% | — |
| Adversarial NLI | 57.3% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 116.33 | — |
| ForecastBench | 58.6 | — |
| WinoGrande | 75.7% | — |

## Math

- Llama 3-8B: 8.3 (#317)
- MiniMax M1: 34.8 (#152)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1151 | 1360 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 1.9% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 6.1% | — |

## Knowledge

- Llama 3-8B: 7.8 (#303)
- MiniMax M1: 35.7 (#168)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1113 | 1316 |
| GPQA Diamond | 26.1% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | 82.8% | — |
| MMLU | 68.8% | — |
| OpenBookQA | 82.6% | — |
| TriviaQA | 67.7% | — |

## Multilingual

- Llama 3-8B: 31.0 (#256)
- MiniMax M1: 46.0 (#157)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1098 | 1320 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1076 | 1361 |
| LMArena French | 1158 | 1369 |
| LMArena German | 1104 | 1350 |
| LMArena Japanese | 967 | 1220 |
| LMArena Korean | 1003 | 1263 |
| LMArena Russian | 1109 | 1330 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1172 | 1354 |

## Instruction Following

- Llama 3-8B: 58.7 (#255)
- MiniMax M1: 69.5 (#169)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1127 | 1312 |

## Long Context

- Llama 3-8B: 34.2 (#246)
- MiniMax M1: 41.4 (#136)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1128 | 1326 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 69.4% |

## Writing & Preference

- Llama 3-8B: 37.7 (#251)
- MiniMax M1: 53.3 (#155)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1166 | 1343 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1150 | 1298 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1152 | 1335 |

## FAQ

### Is Llama 3-8B better than MiniMax M1?

MiniMax M1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.7 to 25.3 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3-8B costs 6.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when MiniMax M1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Llama 3-8B or MiniMax M1?

Llama 3-8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.14 per million input tokens and $0.14 per million output tokens; MiniMax M1 lists at $0.40 and $2.20.

### Is Llama 3-8B or MiniMax M1 better for coding?

MiniMax M1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.2 versus 30.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

MiniMax M1 does, with 1M tokens against 8K.

### How many benchmarks do Llama 3-8B and MiniMax M1 share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Llama 3-8B has 34 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax M1 has 18.