Llama 3.3 70B — Specifications
| Developer | Meta |
|---|---|
| Type | LLM (dense) |
| Modality | Text → Text |
| Parameters | 70B |
| Context window | 128K |
| Max output | — |
| License | Llama 3.3 Community (open) |
| Open weights | Yes |
| Released | 2024 |
| Input price | $0.10 /1M |
| Output price | $0.32 /1M |
| API providers | Together, DeepInfra, OpenRouter, Ollama |
Run it locally
| VRAM (4-bit) | ~40 GB |
|---|---|
| Minimum GPU | 2× RTX 4090 / 1× 48GB |
What is Llama 3.3 70B?
Llama 3.3 70B is Meta’s efficient dense 70B — close to 405B-class quality at a fraction of
the size, with a 128K context. It needs about 40 GB of VRAM at 4-bit, so two RTX 4090s or a
single 48 GB card, and it is among the most-deployed open models for self-hosting.
Dense is the operative word. Nearly every large open model released since is a
mixture-of-experts, which lowers inference compute but keeps the full parameter count
resident in memory — DeepSeek V4-Pro activates 49B parameters but still needs roughly 800 GB
of VRAM to hold. A dense 70B has no such gap: what you load is what you use, so 40 GB is the
whole story. For teams sizing hardware, that predictability is worth a lot, and it is why
3.3 70B remains the default for on-premises deployments even as newer architectures post
better benchmark numbers. At $0.10 in / $0.32 out per million tokens the API is cheap enough
that self-hosting only makes sense for data-residency reasons or at sustained high
volume.
Llama 3.3 70B pricing: API cost per 1M tokens
| Input (per 1M tokens) | $0.100 |
|---|---|
| Output (per 1M tokens) | $0.320 |
| Output/input ratio | 3.2× |
| Blended (4:1 in:out) | $0.144 per 1M tokens |
What Llama 3.3 70B costs per month
Real monthly spend at a 4:1 input-to-output mix — the ratio a typical chat or RAG workload actually produces.
| Workload | Tokens / month | Cost / month |
|---|---|---|
| Side project | 1M in / 0.25M out | $0.18 |
| Small team | 20M in / 5M out | $3.60 |
| Production | 200M in / 50M out | $36 |
Run your own numbers in the AI API cost calculator.
Cheaper alternatives to Llama 3.3 70B
| Model | Blended $/1M | You save |
|---|---|---|
| Mistral 7B open | $0.0220 | 85% cheaper |
| Llama 3.1 8B open | $0.0220 | 85% cheaper |
| Mistral NeMo 12B open | $0.0240 | 83% cheaper |
Self-host or pay the API?
Llama 3.3 70B is open-weight, so you can run it yourself. It needs ~40 GB of VRAM at 4-bit (2× RTX 4090 / 1× 48GB). Self-hosting only beats the API once your volume is high enough to keep that hardware busy — the self-hosting vs API calculator works out the break-even point for your token volume.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Llama 3.3 70B cost per 1M tokens?
Llama 3.3 70B costs $0.100 per 1M input tokens and $0.320 per 1M output tokens. At a typical 4:1 input-to-output mix that blends to about $0.144 per 1M tokens.
How much does Llama 3.3 70B cost per month?
A small-team workload of 20M input and 5M output tokens a month costs about $3.60 on Llama 3.3 70B. A side project (1M in / 0.25M out) costs roughly $0.18.
What is a cheaper alternative to Llama 3.3 70B?
Mistral 7B is the strongest cheaper option in our database at $0.0220 per 1M blended — about 85% less than Llama 3.3 70B. It is also open-weight, so self-hosting is an option.
Can I run Llama 3.3 70B locally?
Yes. Llama 3.3 70B is open-weight and needs about ~40 GB of VRAM at 4-bit quantisation (2× RTX 4090 / 1× 48GB).
Why does Llama 3.3 70B charge more for output than input?
Output tokens are generated one at a time and cannot be batched the way a prompt can, so they cost the provider more to serve. Llama 3.3 70B charges 3.2× more for output, which is why prompt-heavy workloads are far cheaper to run than generation-heavy ones.
Prices are the published list rates for the model's primary API and are reviewed as providers change them. Volume, batch and cached-input discounts are not included. Compare every model side by side in the AI models database or the LLM leaderboard.
