Meta: Llama 3.2 3B Instruct API Pricing
Meta: Llama 3.2 3B Instruct costs $0.051 per 1M input tokens and $0.335 per 1M output tokens. Context window: 131K. Prices verified 2026-10-21 · source
Alternatives to consider
74% cheaper with nearly identical quality (20.1 vs 5.7)
+32.3 quality points for 22% more
Cheapest meta-llama model — 53% less per month
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What would Meta: Llama 3.2 3B Instruct cost you per month?
| Workload | Requests/mo | Avg tokens (in/out) | Est. monthly cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Light chatbot | 10,000 | 800 / 400 | $1.75 |
| Coding agent | 5,000 | 8,000 / 2,000 | $5.39 |
| RAG pipeline | 30,000 | 4,000 / 500 | $11.13 |
| Doc summarizer | 2,000 | 20,000 / 1,000 | $2.71 |
Estimates use list prices without prompt caching. Caching can cut input cost by up to 90% on repeated context.
About Meta: Llama 3.2 3B Instruct
Llama 3.2 3B is a 3-billion-parameter multilingual large language model, optimized for advanced natural language processing tasks like dialogue generation, reasoning, and summarization. Designed with the latest transformer architecture, it...
Compare Meta: Llama 3.2 3B Instruct with
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- 3B Instruct vs Anthropic: Claude Opus 5
- 3B Instruct vs OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Sol
Popular head-to-heads — see all on the comparisons index.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Meta: Llama 3.2 3B Instruct cost?
Meta: Llama 3.2 3B Instruct costs $0.051 per 1M input tokens and $0.335 per 1M output tokens. Verified 2026-10-21 — provider source.
What is the context window?
131K tokens, with up to 72K output tokens per response. That's roughly 164 pages of text in a single request.
Does it support prompt caching?
Prompt-caching pricing is not published for this model via OpenRouter.
What's a cheaper alternative?
Mistral: Mistral Nemo saves about 78% on a typical workload with comparable quality.
Official resources
- Meta: Llama 3.2 3B Instruct on OpenRouter — live endpoint, pricing source of record.
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