Is Llama 3.3 70B Instruct better than Llama 4 Scout?

On accuracy they are statistically tied: Llama 3.3 70B Instruct scored 42.5% and Llama 4 Scout 41.2% on the same 80 questions from open datasets. Similar accuracy; Llama 4 Scout costs less per question.

Which is cheaper, Llama 3.3 70B Instruct or Llama 4 Scout?

Llama 4 Scout is cheaper: $0.00037 per question as billed, against $0.00053. List prices: Llama 3.3 70B Instruct $0.1 in / $0.32 out, Llama 4 Scout $0.1 in / $0.3 out per million tokens.

Which is faster, Llama 3.3 70B Instruct or Llama 4 Scout?

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct is faster at 42 output tokens per second, against 15. Time to first token: 0.7 s for Llama 3.3 70B Instruct, 1.2 s for Llama 4 Scout.

Which has the larger context window, Llama 3.3 70B Instruct or Llama 4 Scout?

Llama 4 Scout, with 1.3M tokens against 131k.

Head to head · tested 27 Oct 2026

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct vs Llama 4 Scout: accuracy, speed and price

Similar accuracy; Llama 4 Scout costs less per question.

MetaLlama 3.3 70B Instruct42.5% score · #52$0.00053 per question42 tok/s

MetaLlama 4 Scout41.2% score · #54$0.00037 per question15 tok/s

Verdict

Built from the measurements below

Accuracy is too close to call: Llama 3.3 70B Instruct scored 42.5% and Llama 4 Scout 41.2% on the same 80 questions, a gap within what chance alone could produce.
Llama 4 Scout is 1.4× cheaper per question as billed ($0.00037 vs $0.00053), reasoning tokens included.
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct generates text 2.7× faster: 42 tokens per second against 15.
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct starts answering sooner: 0.7 s to the first token, against 1.2 s for Llama 4 Scout.
Llama 4 Scout accepts more context: 1.3M tokens against 131k.

Which should you choose?

Choose Llama 3.3 70B Instruct for faster streaming, a quicker first token and more hosts to choose from on OpenRouter (9 against 2). Choose Llama 4 Scout for the lower cost per correct answer ($0.0009 against $0.0013) and a 1.3M-token context window. The widest subject gap is in humanities & social science: Llama 3.3 70B Instruct answered 9 of 9 correctly, Llama 4 Scout 6 of 9. With so few questions per subject, treat this as a lead to test on your own prompts, not a result.

Accuracy gap +1.3 points (z = 0.16). A winner is called only when z is at least 1.96, the usual 95% threshold. Speed, latency and price need a 10% margin.

Head to head

Same questions, same prompt, same API

Measure	Llama 3.3 70B Instruct	Llama 4 Scout	Edge
Verification scoreHigher is better	42.5%	41.2%	Too close to call
Cost per questionLower is better	$0.00053	$0.00037	Llama 4 Scout
Output speedHigher is better	42	15	Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
Time to first tokenLower is better	0.7 s	1.2 s	Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
End-to-end response timeLower is better	8.8 s	25.6 s	Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
Tokens per questionLower is better	855	723	Llama 4 Scout
Context windowHigher is better	131k	1.3M	Llama 4 Scout

Side by side

Bars are scaled to the larger of the two values. The winner on each measure is marked in bold.

Every measure

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct first, Llama 4 Scout second

Verification scorehigher is better

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct42.5%

Llama 4 Scout41.2%

Cost per questionlower is better

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct$0.00053

Llama 4 Scout$0.00037

Output speedhigher is better

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct42

Llama 4 Scout15

Time to first tokenlower is better

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct0.7 s

Llama 4 Scout1.2 s

End-to-end response timelower is better

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct8.8 s

Llama 4 Scout25.6 s

Tokens per questionlower is better

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct855

Llama 4 Scout723

Context windowhigher is better

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct131k

Llama 4 Scout1.3M

Score vs. cost per question

Both models in color, every other model in grey

Results by subject and dataset

Questions answered correctly. Small samples: a gap of one or two questions is noise.

Subject	Questions	Llama 3.3 70B Instruct	Llama 4 Scout
Science	30	11/30	13/30
Engineering	15	2/15	2/15
Medicine	11	6/11	6/11
Economics	9	5/9	4/9
Law	6	1/6	2/6
Humanities & social science	9	9/9	6/9
SuperGPQA dataset	50	9/50	13/50
MMLU-Pro dataset	30	25/30	20/30

Specifications and pricing

From OpenRouter's catalogue, plus the leaderboard's test dates

Specification	Llama 3.3 70B Instruct	Llama 4 Scout
Creator	Meta	Meta
Released	6 Dec 2024	5 Apr 2025
Weights	Open weights	Open weights
Reasoning	No	No
Input	text	text, image
Output	text	text
Context window	131k tokens	1.3M tokens
Knowledge cutoff	31 Dec 2023	31 Aug 2024
List price in / out per 1M	$0.1 / $0.32	$0.1 / $0.3
Blended price per 1M (3:1)	$0.16	$0.15
Cheapest host	DeepInfra · $0.1 / $0.32	DeepInfra · $0.08 / $0.24
Hosts on OpenRouter	9	2
Last tested	26 Oct 2026	27 Oct 2026

Compare any two models →

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct vs Llama 4 Scout: frequently asked questions

Is Llama 3.3 70B Instruct better than Llama 4 Scout?: On accuracy they are statistically tied: Llama 3.3 70B Instruct scored 42.5% and Llama 4 Scout 41.2% on the same 80 questions from open datasets. Similar accuracy; Llama 4 Scout costs less per question.
Which is cheaper, Llama 3.3 70B Instruct or Llama 4 Scout?: Llama 4 Scout is cheaper: $0.00037 per question as billed, against $0.00053. List prices: Llama 3.3 70B Instruct $0.1 in / $0.32 out, Llama 4 Scout $0.1 in / $0.3 out per million tokens.
Which is faster, Llama 3.3 70B Instruct or Llama 4 Scout?: Llama 3.3 70B Instruct is faster at 42 output tokens per second, against 15. Time to first token: 0.7 s for Llama 3.3 70B Instruct, 1.2 s for Llama 4 Scout.
Which has the larger context window, Llama 3.3 70B Instruct or Llama 4 Scout?: Llama 4 Scout, with 1.3M tokens against 131k.