Meta Llama 3.1.8 B Instruct Turbo vs Qwen 3.6 Flash: cost comparison
Prices updated 2026-10-28 · computed from live provider data
Short answer: Meta Llama 3.1.8 B Instruct Turbo is cheaper on a
3:1 input/output blend — $0.180 per million tokens versus
$0.422, a 57% difference.
Qwen 3.6 Flash offers the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens, against 131,072 for Meta Llama 3.1.8 B Instruct Turbo.
Head to head
| Meta Llama 3.1.8 B Instruct Turbo | Qwen 3.6 Flash | |
|---|---|---|
| Input, per 1M tokens | $0.180 | $0.188 |
| Output, per 1M tokens | $0.180 | $1.12 |
| Blended 3:1, per 1M | $0.180 | $0.422 |
| Context window | 131,072 | 1,000,000 |
| Vendor | together_ai | qwen |
Monthly cost at real volumes
| Workload (input / output) | Meta Llama 3.1.8 B Instruct Turbo | Qwen 3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| 1M in / 250K out | $0.225 | $0.469 |
| 10M in / 2.5M out | $2.25 | $4.69 |
| 100M in / 25M out | $22.50 | $46.88 |
Which should you pick?
Pick Qwen 3.6 Flash when you need the longer context window (1,000,000 vs 131,072 tokens). Pick Meta Llama 3.1.8 B Instruct Turbo when price per token dominates your workload — high-volume classification, extraction, or batch summarisation.