Compare/Llama 3 Instruct 8B vs Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)

Llama 3 Instruct 8BvsQwen3.5 9B (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
84 tok/s
TTFT
0.39s
Alibaba

Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)

Input
$0.1/M
Output
$0.15/M
Speed
61 tok/s
TTFT
0.33s

Winner by Category

Cheaper
Llama 3 Instruct 8B
Faster (tok/s)
Llama 3 Instruct 8B
Lower Latency
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)
Benchmarks (3-7)
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)

Pricing Comparison

MetricLlama 3 Instruct 8BQwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)
Input ($/M tokens)$0.045$0.1
Output ($/M tokens)$0.145$0.15
Cost for 1M input + 100K output tokens:
Llama 3 Instruct 8B$0.06
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)$0.12

Speed Comparison

Output Speed (tokens/s) — higher is better
Llama 3 Instruct 8B
84 tok/s
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)
61 tok/s
Time to First Token (seconds) — lower is better
Llama 3 Instruct 8B
0.39s
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)
0.33s

Benchmark Comparison

Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks

Intelligence Index
6.432.4
Coding Index
4.025.3
Math Index
GPQA Diamond
29.6%80.6%
MMLU-Pro
40.5%
LiveCodeBench
9.6%
AIME 2025
MATH-500
49.9%
Humanity's Last Exam
5.1%13.3%
SciCode
11.9%27.5%
IFBench
24.6%66.7%
TerminalBench
0.0%24.2%
Llama 3 Instruct 8B3 wins
7 winsQwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is cheaper, Llama 3 Instruct 8B or Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)?

Llama 3 Instruct 8B is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.07/M tokens vs $0.11/M for Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning).

Which model performs better on benchmarks?

Qwen3.5 9B (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?

Llama 3 Instruct 8B generates tokens faster at 84 tok/s vs 61 tok/s. However, Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) has lower time-to-first-token (0.33s vs 0.39s).

When should I use Llama 3 Instruct 8B vs Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)?

Choose based on your priorities: Llama 3 Instruct 8B for lower cost, Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) for stronger benchmark performance, and Llama 3 Instruct 8B for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.