Llama 3.1 8B Instruct vs QwQ-32B-Preview: Complete Benchmarks, Speed & Cost Comparison (2025)

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct vs QwQ-32B-Preview

Comprehensive side-by-side LLM comparison

QwQ-32B-Preview leads with 34.8% higher average benchmark score. Llama 3.1 8B Instruct offers 196.6K more tokens in context window than QwQ-32B-Preview. Both models have similar pricing. Llama 3.1 8B Instruct is available on 9 providers. Overall, QwQ-32B-Preview is the stronger choice for coding tasks.

Meta

Llama 3.1 8B was developed as an efficient open-source model, designed to bring capable instruction-following to applications with limited computational resources. Built with 8 billion parameters, it provides a lightweight option for developers seeking reliable performance without the overhead of larger models.

Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team

QwQ 32B Preview was introduced as an early access version of the QwQ reasoning model, designed to allow researchers and developers to experiment with advanced analytical capabilities. Built to gather feedback on reasoning-enhanced architecture, it represents an experimental step toward more thoughtful language models.

4 months newer

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct

Pricing Comparison

Cost per million tokens (USD)

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct

Input:$0.03

Output:$0.03($0.29 cheaper)

QwQ-32B-Preview

Input:$0.15

Output:$0.20

Performance Metrics

Context window and performance specifications

Average performance across 1 common benchmarks

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct

Average Score:30.4%

QwQ-32B-Preview

Average Score:65.2%(+34.8%)

Knowledge Cutoff

Training data recency comparison

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct

2023-12-31

QwQ-32B-Preview

2024-11-28

More recent knowledge cutoff means awareness of newer technologies and frameworks

Provider Availability & Performance

Available providers and their performance metrics

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct

9 providers

Bedrock

Throughput: 100 tok/s

Latency: 0.5ms

Cerebras

Throughput: 2047 tok/s

Latency: 0.2ms

DeepInfra

Throughput: 118 tok/s

Latency: 0.5ms

Fireworks

Throughput: 292 tok/s

Latency: 0.5ms

Groq

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct

Avg Score:30.4%

Providers:9

QwQ-32B-Preview

Avg Score:65.2%(+34.8%)

Providers:4