Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.
| Metric | Llama 4 Scout | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Input ($/M tokens) | $0.19 | $0.18 |
| Output ($/M tokens) | $0.68 | $0.7 |
Verdict. Llama 4 Scout and Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct split the benchmark comparison evenly at 1–1. The tiebreaker here is price, speed, and what you actually run them on.
Pricing. Both models sit in the budget bracket for output-token pricing. At 1.0× the per-million-token cost, Llama 4 Scout is meaningfully cheaper if your traffic is output-heavy (long completions, document generation, agent loops). Llama 4 Scout makes more sense when output volume is low and absolute reasoning quality justifies the premium.
Strengths. Llama 4 Scout is strongest on Coding Index (8.2), Intelligence Index (6.5). Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct leads on Intelligence Index (7.3).
Speed. Throughput is comparable — 121 tok/s vs 121 tok/s — so generation speed shouldn't drive your choice here. Look at the per-benchmark wins instead.
Provider. Meta and Alibaba sell to overlapping but distinct developer audiences: Meta tends to ship frontier reasoning models with premium positioning, while Alibaba often prices more aggressively. Your existing vendor relationships, billing, and SLA preferences may matter as much as the raw numbers above.
Workload cost. Workload scenarios (per million requests at 30M input + 15M output tokens): Llama 4 Scout costs $15.90 ($191/year); Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct costs $15.90 ($191/year). At a smaller 5M-input/2M-output scale (single-developer tool or prototype): Llama 4 Scout ≈ $2.31/run, Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct ≈ $2.30/run. At agent/realtime scale (200M input / 100M output per million requests): Llama 4 Scout ≈ $106/run, Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct ≈ $106/run.
Recommendation. Both models have legitimate use cases — the right answer depends on whether you are optimizing for benchmark ceiling, latency, or unit cost. Start with the cheaper / faster model, evaluate against your specific task, and only switch if the upgrade shows a meaningful lift.
Head-to-head deltas
Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.31/M tokens vs $0.31/M for Llama 4 Scout.
It's a tie — both models win 1 benchmarks each across 12 evaluated categories. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.
Llama 4 Scout generates tokens faster at 121 tok/s vs 121 tok/s. Llama 4 Scout also has lower time-to-first-token (0.85s vs 2.21s).
Choose based on your priorities: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct for lower cost, both perform similarly on benchmarks, and Llama 4 Scout for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.