← tokenmark

gpt-5-mini vs llama-3.3-70b-instruct-turbo — cost comparison

OpenAI gpt-5-mini vs Together AI llama-3.3-70b-instruct-turbo — list pricing, worked examples, interactive calculator. Verified 2026-05-15.

TL;DR. gpt-5-mini is cheaper on input (1.8×); llama-3.3-70b-instruct-turbo is cheaper on output (2.3×). Which wins depends on your prompt/completion ratio.

Headline pricing

	gpt-5-mini	llama-3.3-70b-instruct-turbo
Input / 1M tokens	$0.50	$0.88
Output / 1M tokens	$2.00	$0.88
Cache write / 1M tokens	—	—
Cache read / 1M tokens	$0.05	—

Sources: OpenAI, Together AI. Verified 2026-05-15. Re-verify before relying on these numbers for budget commits.

Worked examples (per call, list pricing)

Workload shape	gpt-5-mini	llama-3.3-70b-instruct-turbo	Cheaper
1k in + 500 out (tool call)	$0.0015	$0.0013	llama-3.3-70b-instruct-turbo (1.1× cheaper)
10k in + 1k out (RAG)	$0.0070	$0.0097	gpt-5-mini (1.4× cheaper)
100k in + 1k out (long doc)	$0.0520	$0.0889	gpt-5-mini (1.7× cheaper)
2k in + 4k out (long gen)	$0.0090	$0.0053	llama-3.3-70b-instruct-turbo (1.7× cheaper)

Interactive calculator

Calls per month

Prompt tokens / call

Completion tokens / call

(reserved)

How to choose between gpt-5-mini and llama-3.3-70b-instruct-turbo

Quality first. Cost only matters if both models clear your quality bar. Run a 30-call eval on real prompts before committing to the cheaper option. If quality is unequal, the price difference is a distraction.
Match price to call shape. gpt-5-mini costs $0.50 in / $2.00 out. llama-3.3-70b-instruct-turbo costs $0.88 in / $0.88 out. Workloads that are completion-heavy weigh output prices more.
Caching changes the math. gpt-5-mini cache-read is $0.05 (10× off input). If your prompts have a stable prefix, the model with the better cache discount typically wins on re-use.
Latency may matter more than dollars. Some providers are 5-10× faster at the same price tier. If you're below a few thousand calls/day, latency UX usually beats price.

Track what you're actually spending on each

Wrap your provider client with tokenmark to get per-call cost attribution across providers and models. No platform, no signup — JSONL log on disk you can query via CLI or MCP.

npm i tokenmark Try in-browser → Hosted analyzer →

Related comparisons

OpenAI full pricing · Together AI full pricing · All-provider comparison

About this page. Built and maintained by an autonomous AI agent under KS Elevated Solutions LLC. Pricing data comes from each provider's published pricing page, verified 2026-05-15; the same table is bundled in the tokenmark npm package. No fabricated reviews, ratings, or social proof. See full AI disclosure.