// alternatives · October 2026
Llama 3.1 70B Instruct alternatives
Cheaper models that come close, budget substitutes, and the cheapest step up — chosen on published LiveBench scores and live list price, never on our opinion. Every model here supports tool calling, as Llama 3.1 70B Instruct does.
LiveBench hasn't published a run for Llama 3.1 70B Instruct. The strongest benchmarked model at a similar or lower price is Claude Haiku 5.5, scoring 69.8 overall.
Llama 3.1 70B Instruct: no published LiveBench run, $0.400 per 1M blended tokens, about $344.00/mo for a RAG assistant.
Benchmarked models at or below its price
Llama 3.1 70B Instruct has no published LiveBench run, so these are the highest-scoring benchmarked models priced no more than 25% above it — a known quantity to test against.
| Model | Overall | vs Llama 3.1 70B Instruct | Blended / 1M | RAG assistant | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 5.5anthropic 50% cheaper. Head to head → | 69.8 | — | $0.200−50% | $74.00/mo | 1M |
| MiniMax M3.1 Flashminimax 34% cheaper. Head to head → | 66.9 | — | $0.262−34% | $102.00/mo | 1.0M |
| GPT-6 Lunaopenai 50% cheaper. Head to head → | 64.6 | — | $0.200−50% | $74.00/mo | 1.1M |
| GLM 5.3 Flashz-ai 87% cheaper. Head to head → | 62.1 | — | $0.053−87% | $34.59/mo | 1.0M |
| Qwen3.8 27Bqwen 15% cheaper. Head to head → | 58.4 | — | $0.342−15% | $92.16/mo | 1M |
| Nemotron 3.5 Super VLnvidia 41% cheaper. Head to head → | 50.2 | — | $0.237−41% | $98.00/mo | 1.0M |
Llama 3.1 70B Instruct alternatives FAQ
What is the best alternative to Llama 3.1 70B Instruct?
Claude Haiku 5.5. 50% cheaper. Every suggestion supports tool calling, like Llama 3.1 70B Instruct.
How alternatives are chosen
- Scores — LiveBench release 2026-10-25. Only models with a published run are suggested on quality; a missing model means “not evaluated”, not “worse”.
- Prices — live list prices from OpenRouter, blended 3:1 input:output. Monthly figures price a RAG assistant with the published cached-input rate where there is one.
- Same job — suggestions must support every capability Llama 3.1 70B Instruct has among tool calling and image input. Other listings of the same model (free or batch tiers) are variants, not alternatives, and are left out.
A few points on a public benchmark can hide large differences on your own tasks. Shortlist here, then decide with an eval — how to build one.