Claude Sonnet 4 vs Llama 3.1 8B: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Pricing verified Apr 8, 2026

⚡ Quick Answer

Compare Claude Sonnet 4 and Llama 3.1 8B across pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities.

Updated: April 8, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureClaude Sonnet 4Llama 3.1 8B
ProviderAnthropicMeta
Input Price / 1M tokens$3.00$0.060
Output Price / 1M tokens$15.00$0.060
Context Window
200K
128K
Max Output Tokens
64,000
4,096
Arena ELO
1,280
1,120
Coding ELO1,305N/A
TTFT (ms)
320
150
Tokens/sec
78
100
MultimodalYesNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionYesNo
When to Use Claude Sonnet 4

Claude Sonnet 4 excels at coding, analysis, long-context, agents tasks.

Strengths:

  • Best-in-class coding performance
  • 200K context window
  • Excellent instruction following

Best for:

codinganalysislong-contextagents
When to Use Llama 3.1 8B

Llama 3.1 8B excels at cost-effective, fast-inference tasks.

Strengths:

  • Very cheap
  • Super fast
  • Good for lightweight tasks

Best for:

cost-effectivefast-inference

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