Compare/Llama 3 Instruct 8B vs Qwen3.5 4B (Reasoning)

Llama 3 Instruct 8BvsQwen3.5 4B (Reasoning)

Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.

Meta

Llama 3 Instruct 8B

Input
$0.045/M
Output
$0.145/M
Speed
82 tok/s
TTFT
0.38s
Alibaba

Qwen3.5 4B (Reasoning)

Input
$0.03/M
Output
$0.15/M
Speed
226 tok/s
TTFT
0.34s

Winner by Category

Cheaper
Qwen3.5 4B (Reasoning)
Faster (tok/s)
Qwen3.5 4B (Reasoning)
Lower Latency
Qwen3.5 4B (Reasoning)
Benchmarks (3-7)
Qwen3.5 4B (Reasoning)

Pricing Comparison

MetricLlama 3 Instruct 8BQwen3.5 4B (Reasoning)
Input ($/M tokens)$0.045$0.03
Output ($/M tokens)$0.145$0.15
Cost for 1M input + 100K output tokens:
Llama 3 Instruct 8B$0.06
Qwen3.5 4B (Reasoning)$0.04

Speed Comparison

Output Speed (tokens/s) — higher is better
Llama 3 Instruct 8B
82 tok/s
Qwen3.5 4B (Reasoning)
226 tok/s
Time to First Token (seconds) — lower is better
Llama 3 Instruct 8B
0.38s
Qwen3.5 4B (Reasoning)
0.34s

Benchmark Comparison

Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks

Intelligence Index
6.427.1
Coding Index
4.017.5
Math Index
GPQA Diamond
29.6%77.1%
MMLU-Pro
40.5%
LiveCodeBench
9.6%
AIME 2025
MATH-500
49.9%
Humanity's Last Exam
5.1%7.8%
SciCode
11.9%16.1%
IFBench
24.6%52.0%
TerminalBench
0.0%18.2%
Llama 3 Instruct 8B3 wins
7 winsQwen3.5 4B (Reasoning)

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is cheaper, Llama 3 Instruct 8B or Qwen3.5 4B (Reasoning)?

Qwen3.5 4B (Reasoning) is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.06/M tokens vs $0.07/M for Llama 3 Instruct 8B.

Which model performs better on benchmarks?

Qwen3.5 4B (Reasoning) wins 7 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 3 for Llama 3 Instruct 8B. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.

Which is faster for real-time applications?

Qwen3.5 4B (Reasoning) generates tokens faster at 226 tok/s vs 82 tok/s. However, Qwen3.5 4B (Reasoning) has lower time-to-first-token (0.34s vs 0.38s).

When should I use Llama 3 Instruct 8B vs Qwen3.5 4B (Reasoning)?

Choose based on your priorities: Qwen3.5 4B (Reasoning) for lower cost, Qwen3.5 4B (Reasoning) for stronger benchmark performance, and Qwen3.5 4B (Reasoning) for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.