Is Llama 3.1 70B Instruct a good deal?
Whether anything in this catalogue beats Llama 3.1 70B Instruct on both quality and price, and what you give up if it does. A computation on the current catalogue, not an opinion.
12 undominated of 145 · Oct 6, 2026
As of Oct 6, 2026, Llama 3.1 70B Instruct is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 230.1 higher and costs 25% less, with a covering envelope. 12 of 145 rated, priced standard models are undominated.
Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements
MiMo-V2.6-Pro is both better and cheaper than Llama 3.1 70B Instruct: 230.1 points higher on LMArena and 25% less per million tokens, $0.180 cheaper at this mix.
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1260.9
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$0.720/M
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1491.0
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$0.540/M
Llama 3.1 70B Instruct takes text, returns up to 16,384 tokens from a 131,072-token context, and is listed by 2 sellers.
Compared against 145 rated, priced models on this lens: 53 models dominate it and give up nothing, 5 more dominate it but give something up. Llama 3.1 70B Instruct scores 1260.9 at $0.720 per million tokens for this mix.
Envelope-safe replacements
Each row scores at least as high, costs no more, and covers this model’s context, output, modalities, tools, and reasoning. A cheaper narrower model is not listed here.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| MiMo-V2.6-Pro | 1491.0 +230.1 | $0.540/M | 25% |
| GLM 5.3 Flash | 1469.6 +208.7 | $0.238/M | 67% |
| MiMo-V2.5-Pro | 1465.0 +204.1 | $0.544/M | 24% |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | 1462.5 +201.6 | $0.182/M | 75% |
| MiMo-V2.6-Flash | 1456.4 +195.5 | $0.175/M | 76% |
| Qwen3.7 Plus | 1454.6 +193.7 | $0.560/M | 22% |
| Gemma 4 31B | 1443.4 +182.5 | $0.205/M | 72% |
| Hy3 | 1440.7 +179.8 | $0.231/M | 68% |
| Qwen3.8 27B | 1440.7 +179.8 | $0.562/M | 22% |
| Gemma 4 26B A4B | 1433.9 +173.0 | $0.127/M | 82% |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 | 1432.1 +171.2 | $0.113/M | 84% |
| MiniMax M3 | 1432.1 +171.2 | $0.485/M | 33% |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | 1431.0 +170.1 | $0.450/M | 38% |
| MiMo-V2.5 | 1427.5 +166.6 | $0.175/M | 76% |
| DeepSeek V3.2 | 1424.5 +163.6 | $0.290/M | 60% |
| DeepSeek V3.2 Exp | 1422.4 +161.5 | $0.305/M | 58% |
| Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct | 1420.1 +159.2 | $0.370/M | 49% |
| DeepSeek V3.1 | 1419.7 +158.8 | $0.453/M | 37% |
| Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507 | 1419.3 +158.4 | $0.205/M | 72% |
| Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct | 1417.3 +156.4 | $0.268/M | 63% |
| DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus | 1417.1 +156.2 | $0.453/M | 37% |
| Qwen3.5-122B-A10B | 1417.1 +156.2 | $0.715/M | 1% |
| Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview | 1415.7 +154.8 | $0.563/M | 22% |
| Inkling Small | 1413.7 +152.8 | $0.638/M | 11% |
| Qwen3.5-27B | 1408.9 +148.0 | $0.536/M | 26% |
| MiniMax M2.7 | 1404.6 +143.7 | $0.525/M | 27% |
| Step 3.5 Flash | 1403.0 +142.1 | $0.150/M | 79% |
| Qwen3.5-Flash | 1397.0 +136.1 | $0.114/M | 84% |
| Qwen3.5-35B-A3B | 1394.4 +133.5 | $0.355/M | 51% |
| GPT-6 Luna | 1391.5 +130.6 | $0.200/M | 72% |
| Solar Pro 4 | 1386.2 +125.3 | $0.525/M | 27% |
| Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 | 1384.1 +123.2 | $0.143/M | 80% |
| GLM 4.5 Air | 1383.9 +123.0 | $0.310/M | 57% |
| GLM 4.6V | 1376.8 +115.9 | $0.450/M | 38% |
| DeepSeek V3 0324 | 1375.0 +114.1 | $0.438/M | 39% |
| GPT-5 Mini | 1373.2 +112.3 | $0.688/M | 5% |
| GPT-5.4 Nano | 1372.1 +111.2 | $0.463/M | 36% |
| Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Thinking | 1368.3 +107.4 | $0.413/M | 43% |
| gpt-oss-120b | 1365.4 +104.5 | $0.065/M | 91% |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 1359.3 +98.4 | $0.521/M | 28% |
| Gemma 3 27B | 1357.8 +96.9 | $0.100/M | 86% |
| GLM 4.7 Flash | 1350.9 +90.0 | $0.145/M | 80% |
| GPT-4.1 Mini | 1340.4 +79.5 | $0.700/M | 3% |
| Qwen3 32B | 1340.1 +79.2 | $0.130/M | 82% |
| Trinity Large Thinking | 1340.0 +79.1 | $0.388/M | 46% |
| MiniMax M2 | 1339.9 +79.0 | $0.525/M | 27% |
| Gemma 3 12B | 1334.2 +73.3 | $0.075/M | 90% |
| GPT-5 Nano | 1320.0 +59.1 | $0.138/M | 81% |
| Granite 4.2 8B | 1317.8 +56.9 | $0.108/M | 85% |
| Qwen3 30B A3B | 1316.6 +55.7 | $0.215/M | 70% |
| gpt-oss-20b | 1287.7 +26.8 | $0.036/M | 95% |
| GPT-4.1 Nano | 1284.8 +23.9 | $0.175/M | 76% |
| Llama 3.3 70B Instruct | 1274.1 +13.2 | $0.201/M | 72% |
Higher score, lower price, named losses
Not a drop-in. The loss is why these are not a recommendation.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You give up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mercury 2 | 1355.2 | $0.375/M | context |
| DeepSeek V3 | 1332.5 | $0.500/M | max output |
| Gemma 3 4B | 1290.8 | $0.063/M | tools |
| GPT-4o-mini (2024-07-18) | 1286.4 | $0.263/M | context |
| Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | 1269.0 | $0.370/M | context |
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