Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 5 vs Llama 3-8B

Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.5 to 25.3 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3-8B costs 29× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 23 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 5 Anthropic

54.5

Rank #26 Confirmed

Llama 3-8B Meta

25.3

Rank #338 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 23 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher in 8 categories and Llama 3-8B in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where Claude Sonnet 5 leads 66.1 to 8.3.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 94.7% for Claude Sonnet 5 and 1.9% for Llama 3-8B.
  • Llama 3-8B is cheaper at $0.14 / $0.14 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.
  • Claude Sonnet 5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 8K.
  • Llama 3-8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 5Llama 3-8B
ProviderAnthropicMeta
Noometry Index54.525.3
Released2026-06-292024-04-18
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M8K
Max output128K8K
Input $ / M tokens$2$0.14
Output $ / M tokens$10$0.14
Results tracked5134

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 55.5 (#20), Llama 3-8B: 30.5 (#285)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Llama 3-8B
LMArena Coding14831152
DeepSWE53.8%—
FrontierCode42.7%—
CursorBench34.1%—
LMArena WebDev1540—
SciCode53.6%—
GSO37.3%—
WeirdML68.8%—
BigCodeBench Instruct—31.9%
BigCodeBench Complete—36.9%
ALE-Bench1,463—
HumanEval+—56.7%
MBPP+—54.8%

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 5: 42.7 (#16), Llama 3-8B: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Llama 3-8B
APEX-Agents54.5%—
GBAEval65.3%—
LMArena Search1194—
Vending-Bench 26,378—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 48.2 (#37), Llama 3-8B: 13.8 (#321)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Llama 3-8B
Chess Puzzles35%0%
LMArena Hard Prompts14611133
DTBench92.5%43.9%
Epoch Capabilities Index156.34116.33
ForecastBench61.158.6
SimpleBench60.6%—
NYT Connections (extended)75.1%—
CritPt16.9%—
Mystery Game Puzzles35%—
LMCA50%—
Surface Evolver Bench60%—
Adversarial NLI—57.3%
Bench to the Future 30.14—
WinoGrande—75.7%

Math Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 66.1 (#21), Llama 3-8B: 8.3 (#317)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Llama 3-8B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202594.7%1.9%
LMArena Math14671151
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)65.6%—
FrontierMath Tier 429.3%—
ProofBench77%—
MATH Level 5—6.1%

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 55.7 (#42), Llama 3-8B: 7.8 (#303)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Llama 3-8B
GPQA Diamond90.5%26.1%
LMArena Expert14911113
SimpleQA Verified33.7%—
ARC (AI2) Challenge—82.8%
MMLU—68.8%
OpenBookQA—82.6%
TriviaQA—67.7%

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 5: 42.4 (#26), Llama 3-8B: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Llama 3-8B
LMArena Vision1275—
Blueprint-Bench 224.9%—
LMArena Document1466—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 54.0 (#55), Llama 3-8B: 31.0 (#256)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Llama 3-8B
LMArena Non-English14311098
LMArena Chinese14751076
LMArena French14571158
LMArena German14481104
LMArena Japanese1422967
LMArena Korean14111003
LMArena Russian14521109
LMArena Spanish14361172

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 76.6 (#39), Llama 3-8B: 58.7 (#255)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Llama 3-8B
LMArena Instruction Following14531127

Long Context Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 44.8 (#53), Llama 3-8B: 34.2 (#246)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Llama 3-8B
LMArena Longer Query14641128

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 69.4 (#24), Llama 3-8B: 37.7 (#251)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Llama 3-8B
LMArena Text14431166
LMArena Creative Writing14161150
LMArena Multi-Turn14541152
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1794—
EQ-Bench 41236—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Llama 3-8B?

Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.5 to 25.3 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3-8B costs 29× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5 or Llama 3-8B?

Llama 3-8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.14 per million input tokens and $0.14 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5 lists at $2 and $10.

Is Claude Sonnet 5 or Llama 3-8B better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.5 versus 30.5 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 5 does, with 1M tokens against 8K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 5 and Llama 3-8B share?

23 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5 has 51 scored results on Noometry and Llama 3-8B has 34.

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