GPT-3.5 Turbo vs Llama 3.1 8B: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Pricing verified Apr 8, 2026

⚡ Quick Answer

Compare GPT-3.5 Turbo and Llama 3.1 8B across pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities.

Updated: April 8, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGPT-3.5 TurboLlama 3.1 8B
ProviderOpenAIMeta
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.500$0.060
Output Price / 1M tokens$1.50$0.060
Context Window
16K
128K
Max Output Tokens
4,096
4,096
Arena ELO
1,120
1,120
Coding ELO1,100N/A
TTFT (ms)
150
150
Tokens/sec
100
100
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionNoNo
When to Use GPT-3.5 Turbo

GPT-3.5 Turbo excels at cost-effective, general-purpose tasks.

Strengths:

  • Very cheap
  • Fast
  • Widely used

Best for:

cost-effectivegeneral-purpose
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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