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Meta Llama 3.1 405B Instruct vs Llama 4 Scout

On provider list prices, Llama 4 Scout costs $0.18 per million input tokens against $3.50 for Meta Llama 3.1 405B Instruct: 19.4x apart. Output is $0.59 against $3.50 (5.9x). On Allocate both bill at list plus the 7% transaction fee.

Meta Llama 3.1 405B Instruct Llama 4 Scout
LabMetaMeta
AccessOpen weightsOpen weights
Context window4K tokens1M tokens
List price, input$3.5 / M tokens$0.18 / M tokens
List price, output$3.5 / M tokens$0.59 / M tokens
Cached inputn/an/a
LicenseLlama communityLlama community
Fine-tunableYesYes

Specifications and provider list prices from the Allocate catalog, checked 2026-07-08. Billed price is list plus the 7% transaction fee.

What the numbers say

Take 1,000,000 requests a month at 1,200 input and 350 output tokens each. That workload costs $422.50 a month on Llama 4 Scout and $5,425 on Meta Llama 3.1 405B Instruct at list: a gap of $5,003, or 12.8x.

Llama 4 Scout reads 1M tokens per request against 4K for Meta Llama 3.1 405B Instruct, 256.0x the window. That decides which one can take whole documents without splitting them.

Llama 4 Scout$0.18$0.59
Meta Llama 3.1 405B Instruct$3.50$3.50
InputOutput

Choose Meta Llama 3.1 405B Instruct for

  • Training toward a model you own
Meta Llama 3.1 405B Instruct details

Choose Llama 4 Scout for

  • Whole-document reasoning
  • High-volume extraction
  • Fine-tuning under the Llama 4 license
Llama 4 Scout details

Common questions

Which is cheaper, Meta Llama 3.1 405B Instruct or Llama 4 Scout?

Llama 4 Scout, on this workload shape. At list prices it is $0.18/$0.59 per million tokens in and out against $3.50/$3.50 for Meta Llama 3.1 405B Instruct. Billed on Allocate: $0.19/$0.63 against $3.75/$3.75, list plus 7%.

Which has the bigger context window?

Llama 4 Scout: 1,048,576 tokens (1M) against 4,096 (4K) for Meta Llama 3.1 405B Instruct.

Can I fine-tune Meta Llama 3.1 405B Instruct or Llama 4 Scout?

Both publish open weights (Meta Llama 3.1 405B Instruct: Llama community; Llama 4 Scout: Llama community), so both can be fine-tuned. On Allocate the trained weights stay inside your boundary and belong to you.

Related comparisons

Meta Llama 3.1 405B Instruct vs Meta Llama 3.3 70B Instruct TurboLlama 4 Scout vs Meta Llama 3.3 70B Instruct TurboMeta Llama 3.1 405B Instruct vs Qwen3.5 397B A17bLlama 4 Scout vs Qwen3.5 397B A17bMeta Llama 3.1 405B Instruct vs Kimi K2.5 Fp4Llama 4 Scout vs Kimi K2.5 Fp4

Run the numbers on your workload

LLM price comparisonAgent cost calculatorMeta Llama 3.1 405B InstructLlama 4 Scout

Or don’t choose. On Allocate a route name is the contract: point yours at one model today, swap to the other tomorrow, and compare them on your live traffic with per-token metering.

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