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llama-3.1-8b-instant vs llama-3.3-70b-instruct-turbo — cost comparison

Groq llama-3.1-8b-instant vs Together AI llama-3.3-70b-instruct-turbo — list pricing, worked examples, interactive calculator. Verified 2026-05-15.

TL;DR. llama-3.1-8b-instant is cheaper on both input (17.6×) and output (11.0×).

Headline pricing

	llama-3.1-8b-instant	llama-3.3-70b-instruct-turbo
Input / 1M tokens	$0.05	$0.88
Output / 1M tokens	$0.08	$0.88
Cache write / 1M tokens	—	—
Cache read / 1M tokens	—	—

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

Worked examples (per call, list pricing)

Workload shape	llama-3.1-8b-instant	llama-3.3-70b-instruct-turbo	Cheaper
1k in + 500 out (tool call)	$0.000090	$0.0013	llama-3.1-8b-instant (14.7× cheaper)
10k in + 1k out (RAG)	$0.000580	$0.0097	llama-3.1-8b-instant (16.7× cheaper)
100k in + 1k out (long doc)	$0.0051	$0.0889	llama-3.1-8b-instant (17.5× cheaper)
2k in + 4k out (long gen)	$0.000420	$0.0053	llama-3.1-8b-instant (12.6× cheaper)

Interactive calculator

Calls per month

Prompt tokens / call

Completion tokens / call

(reserved)

How to choose between llama-3.1-8b-instant 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. llama-3.1-8b-instant costs $0.05 in / $0.08 out. llama-3.3-70b-instruct-turbo costs $0.88 in / $0.88 out. Workloads that are completion-heavy weigh output prices more.
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.

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Related comparisons

Groq 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.