AI21 vs Groq · synced 2026-08-11

jamba-mini-1.7 vs llama-3.1-8b-instant

llama-3.1-8b-instant is 4.0× cheaper on input than jamba-mini-1.7.

jamba-mini-1.7 llama-3.1-8b-instant
Input / 1M $0.20 $0.05
Cached input / 1M
Output / 1M $0.40 $0.08
Context window 256K 128K
Max output 256K 8K
Provider AI21 Groq
Vision No No
Tool calling No Yes
Token count estimated estimated

Capability for the money

Independent measurement · Artificial Analysis · read 2026-08-11

jamba-mini-1.7 is 4.3× dearer for 6.3 points on hard reasoning (GPQA Diamond) — worth it only if that is your bottleneck.

  1. Following instructions

    extraction, classification, sticking to a format

    IFBench
    jamba-mini-1.731.4%
    llama-3.1-8b-instant28.6%

    jamba-mini-1.7 +2.8

  2. Coding

    writing and fixing code

    LiveCodeBench
    jamba-mini-1.76.1%
    llama-3.1-8b-instant11.6%

    llama-3.1-8b-instant +5.5

  3. Tool use

    multi-step agent work against real tools

    τ²-bench
    jamba-mini-1.712.6%
    llama-3.1-8b-instant16.4%

    llama-3.1-8b-instant +3.8

  4. Hard reasoning

    graduate-level science and multi-step analysis

    GPQA Diamond
    jamba-mini-1.732.2%
    llama-3.1-8b-instant25.9%

    jamba-mini-1.7 +6.3

Averaged over the benchmarks both models sat, llama-3.1-8b-instant returns 358.7 points of pass rate per dollar of blended price against 82.3 — the ratio that decides whether the dearer model earns its rate.

Each figure is a pass rate: the share of that test set the model answered correctly, measured by a third party rather than self-reported by the lab. Rows are different tests of different difficulty, so compare a model against the other model, not one row against the next. And a benchmark is not your workload — it narrows the shortlist, it does not pick for you.

Which to pick

List price is not production cost. Output length, cache hit rate, retries and task quality move the real number more than the headline rate does — price your own prompt on the token ledger before deciding.

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