Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.
| Metric | Solar Mini | Llama 3 Instruct 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Input ($/M tokens) | $0.15 | $0.04 |
| Output ($/M tokens) | $0.15 | $0.14 |
Verdict. Solar Mini wins the overall benchmark matchup 1–0 across 1 overlapping categories, but raw benchmark score is only one input to the decision.
Pricing. Both models sit in the budget bracket for output-token pricing. At 1.1× the per-million-token cost, Llama 3 Instruct 8B is meaningfully cheaper if your traffic is output-heavy (long completions, document generation, agent loops). Llama 3 Instruct 8B makes more sense when output volume is low and absolute reasoning quality justifies the premium.
Strengths. Solar Mini is strongest on Intelligence Index (6.0). Llama 3 Instruct 8B leads on Intelligence Index (1.0).
Speed. Speed data is incomplete for this pair; benchmark and price should decide.
Provider. Upstage and Meta sell to overlapping but distinct developer audiences: Upstage tends to ship frontier reasoning models with premium positioning, while Meta 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): Solar Mini costs $6.75 ($81/year); Llama 3 Instruct 8B costs $3.30 ($40/year). At a smaller 5M-input/2M-output scale (single-developer tool or prototype): Solar Mini ≈ $1.05/run, Llama 3 Instruct 8B ≈ $0.48/run. At agent/realtime scale (200M input / 100M output per million requests): Solar Mini ≈ $45/run, Llama 3 Instruct 8B ≈ $22/run. Llama 3 Instruct 8B becomes more attractive at higher volume — the absolute per-token pricing difference compounds when you ship at scale.
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.
Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks
Llama 3 Instruct 8B is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.07/M tokens vs $0.15/M for Solar Mini.
Solar Mini wins 1 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 0 for Llama 3 Instruct 8B. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.
Both models have comparable generation speeds.
Choose based on your priorities: Llama 3 Instruct 8B for lower cost, Solar Mini for stronger benchmark performance, and both have comparable speed. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.