Llama 3.1 8B vs Llama Guard 4 12B
How do these models stack up? Below is an expert side-by-side comparison of specifications, context window capacity, live pricing per million tokens, and standardized benchmark scores for Llama 3.1 8B and Llama Guard 4 12B.
Llama 3.1 8B
Llama 3.1 8B is Meta's lightweight open-weight model from the Llama 3.1 generation, optimized for efficient deployment on consumer hardware and edge devices. Despite its compact 8-billion-parameter size, it delivers strong performance on instruction following, text summarization, and lightweight coding tasks. Lllama 3.1 8B is the most downloaded model in the Llama family and runs efficiently on laptops, single GPUs, and CPU via quantization — making it the default choice for on-device AI applications and local prototyping.
Llama Guard 4 12B
Llama Guard 4 is a Llama 4 Scout-derived multimodal pretrained model, fine-tuned for content safety classification. Similar to previous versions, it can be used to classify content in both LLM...
Technical Specifications
| Specification | Llama 3.1 8B | Llama Guard 4 12B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Meta | Meta |
| Context Window | 131,072 tokens | 163,840 tokens |
| Agent Suitability | 74/100 | N/A |
| Time to First Token (TTFT) | 80 ms | N/A |
| Deployment Model | self hostable | self hostable |
| Production Stability | stable | stable |
| API Available | Yes | Yes |
| Released Date | 2024-07-23 | 2025-04-30 |
API Pricing Comparison
Input Price per Million Tokens
Llama 3.1 8B
$0.04
Llama Guard 4 12B
$0.18
Output Price per Million Tokens
Llama 3.1 8B
$0.04
Llama Guard 4 12B
$0.18
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Benchmark Performance Metrics
Scores show the raw performance percentages verified across key evaluation suites. Higher bars indicate superior accuracy and capability in that domain.
Llama 3.1 8B Quirks & Gotchas
- ▸Perfect for CPU/edge deployment — runs on Raspberry Pi with quantization
- ▸Limited tool calling vs larger models — best for simple classification and chat
Llama Guard 4 12B Quirks & Gotchas
No developer gotchas reported.