How much does Llama 3.1 8B Instruct cost per million tokens?

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct costs $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens at list price, and $0.025 per million cached input tokens.

What is the context window of Llama 3.1 8B Instruct?

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct accepts up to 131,072 tokens of context and returns up to 117,964 output tokens.

How much do 1,000 chat messages cost with Llama 3.1 8B Instruct?

About $0.09, assuming 1,000 input + 500 output tokens per message.

Is there a cheaper alternative to Llama 3.1 8B Instruct?

In the same price range, Qwen Qwen3.7 Flash ($0.03 / $0.13), DeepSeek DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 ($0.042 / $0.084), OpenAI gpt-oss-20b ($0.018 / $0.09) cost less per token. Quality differs: test on your own prompts.

Where can I buy Meta API credits for less?

Discount credit books resell OpenRouter usage below face value within their depth, OpenRouter adds a 5.5% card fee, and Meta sells its own credits at face value. The live table on this page ranks them for $100 of usage.

Meta · live price

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct API pricing

Meta's latest class of model (Llama 3.1) launched with a variety of sizes & flavors. This 8B instruct-tuned version is fast and efficient. It has demonstrated strong performance compared to...

Small and cheap (under $1 per 1M)Tool calling

Input: $0.05; per 1M tokens
Output: $0.08; per 1M tokens
Cached input: $0.025; per 1M tokens
Context: 131K; 118K max output

List price from OpenRouter, which passes Meta's price through without markup. Refreshed hourly. Released July 23, 2024. Model id meta-llama/llama-3.1-8b-instruct.

What Llama 3.1 8B Instruct costs in practice

At list price, before any batch or caching discount.

1,000 chat messages

$0.09

1,000 input + 500 output tokens each

1,000 RAG questions

$0.44

8,000 input + 500 output tokens each

100 coding-agent steps

$0.17

30,000 input + 2,000 output tokens each, no caching

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct price history

No price change since we started tracking on 2026-10-01. We record prices daily; changes will show here.

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct price by host

DeepInfra serves it below list price right now. Route to it to pay less on every token.

DeepInfra$0.02 in · $0.04 out · 131K ctx · 99.1% uptime 24h
Novita$0.02 in · $0.05 out · 16K ctx · 98.1% uptime 24h
Groq$0.05 in · $0.08 out · 131K ctx · 99.8% uptime 24h
Cloudflare$0.152 in · $0.287 out · 32K ctx · 97.5% uptime 24h
CoreWeave$0.22 in · $0.22 out · 131K ctx · 100.0% uptime 24h

Where to buy Meta credits for less

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct costs the same per token everywhere it's sold through OpenRouter. What changes is the price of the credits. Live quotes for $100 of usage:

#	Where you buy	You payYou pay for $100.00 of usage	vs list price	Price source
1	OrbioCardCheapest right now Credits from a discount book, plus a 5% platform fee and card processing, both included in the quote.	$85.10 incl. $2.60 card processing	-14.9%	live quote
2	smaaartCard Credits from a discount book, plus a 5% platform fee on face value. Card processing and taxes shown at checkout.	$95.00 + card processing and tax at checkout (not in this number)	-5.0%	live quote
3	Direct from the labCard Prepaid credits at face value (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google…). Taxes may apply.	$100.00 no top-up fee	list price	face value
4	OpenRouterCrypto 5% on crypto purchases. No markup on model prices.	$105.00 fees included	+5.0%	published fee
5	OpenRouterCard 5.5% on card purchases, $0.80 minimum. No markup on model prices.	$105.50 fees included	+5.5%	published fee

Disclosure: this site is run by the team behind smaaart, one of the options compared. Tables are ranked by price only, from live quotes and published fees, including when smaaart isn't first. How we compare

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct cost calculator

Enter your monthly tokens to price your own usage.

Model$0.05 in / $0.08 out per 1M tokens · list price, liveInput tokens / month (millions)Output tokens / month (millions)

Usage at list price$3.30/ month(quotes below are for $5.00: purchases run from $5.00 to $10,000.00)

Cheaper alternatives to Llama 3.1 8B Instruct

Other labs' models in the same price range or the one below, cheaper per token.

Model	Input / 1M	Output / 1M	Blended 3:1	Context
Qwen: Qwen3.7 Flash	$0.03	$0.13	$0.055	1M
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423	$0.042	$0.084	$0.052	1.0M
OpenAI: gpt-oss-20b	$0.018	$0.09	$0.036	131K
Mistral: Mistral Nemo	$0.019	$0.03	$0.022	131K
inclusionAI: Ling 3.0 Flash VL	$0.021	$0.062	$0.031	262K
Nex AGI: Nex-N2.5-Mini	$0.025	$0.1	$0.044	262K

Other Meta models

Model	Input / 1M	Output / 1M	Blended 3:1	Context
Llama 3.1 70B Instruct	$0.4	$0.4	$0.4	131K
Llama 3.2 1B Instruct	$0.027	$0.201	$0.071	60K
Llama 3.2 3B Instruct	$0.05	$0.33	$0.12	131K
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct	$0.1	$0.32	$0.155	131K
Llama 4 Scout	$0.1	$0.3	$0.15	1.3M
Llama 4 Maverick	$0.188	$0.652	$0.304	1.0M

All Meta API prices