Llama 3 8B

Meta's 8B-parameter open-weight Llama 3 model, released April 2024.

Params: 8B
Context: 8K tokens
Cutoff: Mar 2023
Released: Apr 2024
License: Meta Llama 3 Community License

Visit Meta Compare vs other LLMs →

Hosted API price

Cheapest via Replicate · per 1M tokens

USD

Input: $0.05 /1M
Output: $0.25 /1M
Hosted by: 3 providers

Hosted API pricing

How we price

Order

Providers are listed cheapest input rate first, then by output rate, a tie going to the creator's own listing. A provider that lists the model without a published rate sits at the end.

Prices

Base-tier, on-demand rates in USD per 1M tokens, converted at ECB reference rates where a provider publishes in another currency. Cached-input and batch rates show only where a provider publishes them. "Cheapest" marks the one provider with the lowest input and output pair; a tie wears no badge.

Cost

Input rate times the input tokens plus output rate times the output tokens, at the monthly volume set above the table. Cached-input, batch, long-context and reasoning-token billing are not modelled.

Transparency and funding

Affiliates: Affiliate links are marked. We may earn a commission if you click them, but commissions never affect the order.

Every provider serving Llama 3 8B, cheapest input first. Set your monthly volume to see what each would bill.

Input M Output M

Every provider serving Llama 3 8B, with its price per 1M input and output tokens and what the volume above would cost
Provider	Input /1M	Output /1M	Cost at 10M in + 2M out	Link
Replicate Cheapest	$0.05	$0.25	$1.00	Visit website
Together AI	$0.14	$0.14	$1.68	Visit website
Meta Creator	Open weights, no hosted price			Visit website

Heads up: Base-tier, on-demand rates per 1M tokens; cached, batch and long-context tiers excluded. A provider may serve a shorter context or a quantized build than the creator's release. Verify before provisioning. More on how we price.

Estimated cost to self-host

Llama 3 8B needs about 7 GB of GPU memory at 4-bit with its full 8K context. The cheapest rental that fits is 1× RTX 3060 at about $58 a month.

That costs the same as roughly 691M tokens a month on Replicate's API. Self-hosting is more expensive below that volume.

Fits on 1 Single node ≤ 8

What it costs to self-host Llama 3 8B at each precision: the memory it needs, the cheapest rental that holds it, that rental's month and the API volume it pays off at
Precision	Memory	Cheapest fit (Full 8K context)	Cost /mo	Break-even vs API
4-bit INT4 / FP4	7 GB	1× RTX 3060	$58	691M tokens /mo
8-bit FP8 / INT8	11 GB	1× RTX 4060 Ti	$94	1B tokens /mo
16-bit FP16 / BF16	19 GB	2× RTX 3060	$115	1B tokens /mo

Estimates based on median on-demand rates for Nvidia GPUs. Memory is weights plus KV cache for one request, using FP8 KV cache where supported and FP16/BF16 otherwise. Break-even assumes a 5:1 input-to-output ratio. No guarantee of runtime support, usable performance, or that a matching quantized build exists. Pricing methodology.

Similarly priced models

The models nearest Llama 3 8B by blended rate, each at its own cheapest provider.

Models priced nearest Llama 3 8B per 1M tokens, each at its cheapest provider
Model	Blended /1M	Input /1M	Output /1M	Context	Cutoff	vs Llama 3 8B
Llama 3.2 1B Meta	$0.056	$0.027	$0.201	128K	Dec 2023	−33%
Command R7B Cohere	$0.0583	$0.04	$0.15	128K		−30%
Gemma 3 12B Instruct Google Cloud	$0.0583	$0.05	$0.10	128K	Aug 2024	−30%
GPT-OSS-120B OpenAI	$0.0628	$0.039	$0.182	131K	Jun 2024	−25%
Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B Nvidia	$0.075	$0.05	$0.20	262K	Jun 2025	−10%
Llama 3 8B This model Meta	$0.0833	$0.05	$0.25	8K	Mar 2023
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B Alibaba Cloud	$0.0917	$0.06	$0.25	262K		+10%
Llama 3.2 3B Meta	$0.0983	$0.051	$0.335	128K	Dec 2023	+18%
Qwen3-30B-A3B FP8 Alibaba Cloud	$0.0983	$0.051	$0.335	33K		+18%
Ministral 3 3B Mistral	$0.10	$0.10	$0.10	256K		+20%
GLM-5.3-Flash Z.AI	$0.1042	$0.075	$0.25	1M		+25%

USD per 1M tokens at each model's cheapest listed provider. Blended is the cost of 10M input plus 2M output tokens, spread over the 12M.

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Capabilities

What Llama 3 8B accepts and can do, as published by Meta.

Text Accepts and generates natural-language text.

Common questions

What is Llama 3 8B good for?

Small text-only tasks such as classification, short chat and extraction. Open weights under the Meta Llama 3 Community License, small enough for a single consumer GPU.

When is Llama 3 8B not a good fit?

Image input and tool calling, which it has neither of, and anything needing recent knowledge. Llama 3.1 8B takes far longer inputs and adds function calling under a similar licence.

What is the cheapest way to run Llama 3 8B?

Hosted, unless you push serious volume. Replicate charges $0.05 in / $0.25 out per 1M tokens. The cheapest rental that fits is 1x RTX 3060 at $58 a month, which costs the same as about 691M tokens a month on that API.

How does Llama 3 8B compare with Llama 3.1 8B?

Meta says Llama 3.1 8B upgrades Llama 3 8B with more and better training data and a new multi-round post-training, adding a much longer context, multilingual support, tool use and what Meta calls stronger reasoning. Same text input. Llama 3 8B costs 150% more per 1M input tokens and 400% more per 1M output tokens than Llama 3.1 8B, at each model's cheapest listed provider. It came out 3 months earlier, has an older knowledge cutoff (March 2023 against December 2023) and a smaller context (8K against 131K tokens) and is licensed under Meta Llama 3 Community License against Llama 3.1 Community License.

Can I self-host Llama 3 8B?

Yes. The weights are released under the Meta Llama 3 Community License. At 4-bit it needs about 7 GB of GPU memory, which starts at roughly $58 a month on the cheapest rental that fits.