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ModelCap

Head-to-head comparison

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct vs Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct (Meta) and Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 (NVIDIA) compared on the ModelCap Index, API price, context window, provider availability, weight access and every public benchmark board they share. Figures are the same ones shown on the live rankings; nothing here is a hidden score.

Snapshot as of 12 September 2026

As of 12 September 2026, Llama 3.1 8B Instruct holds the stronger ModelCap Index position (#180 vs #182).

Which should you choose?

Choose Llama 3.1 8B Instruct if…

  • you want the stronger overall ModelCap Index position — #180 against #182 (7.8 vs 6.6 points).
  • you want provider choice — 5 listed API providers against 0.

Choose Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 if…

  • you want the more recently listed model — Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 was listed 20 August 2025, Llama 3.1 8B Instruct 23 July 2024.

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct vs Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3: specs, pricing and context

Specification comparison of Llama 3.1 8B Instruct and Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3
FieldLlama 3.1 8B InstructMetaLlama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3NVIDIA
ModelCap Index position#180#182
Index score7.86.6
EvidenceMeasuredInherited
Input price / 1M tokens$0.05Unlisted
Output price / 1M tokens$0.08Unlisted
Context window131K tokens— tokens
Max output tokens118K—
API providers listed50
Weight accessGated accessRestricted license
Input modalitiesTextText
First listed23 July 202420 August 2025
PublisherMetaNVIDIA

Evidence: 2 public benchmark observations across 2 boards · finetune of meta-llama/llama-3.1-8b-instruct · finetune (100%). Prices are the lowest listed API offer per million tokens observed on the OpenRouter catalogue.

Benchmark scores: Llama 3.1 8B Instruct vs Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3

Public benchmark boards where Llama 3.1 8B Instruct or Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 has a published result
BoardLlama 3.1 8B InstructLlama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3Leads
Arena codingArena (LMArena)12601252–1267—Only one result
BFCL V4UC Berkeley (Gorilla)25.8Prompt—Only one result

Scores are the sources' own published figures for each model's best evaluated configuration; ModelCap never re-runs a benchmark.

Want a different pairing? Open the interactive comparison tool to swap either model for any current ranked language model.

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct vs Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3: common questions

Is Llama 3.1 8B Instruct better than Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3?

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct ranks higher on the ModelCap Index as of 12 September 2026: #180 against #182. That is a capability ranking built from public benchmark evidence with published uncertainty; whether it is "better" for you also depends on price, context and where you can run it. Their published uncertainty intervals overlap, so the rank difference alone does not establish a reliable capability advantage for your workload.

Is Llama 3.1 8B Instruct cheaper than Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3?

At least one of the two has no listed API price on ModelCap right now, so no price comparison is made.

Which has the bigger context window, Llama 3.1 8B Instruct or Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3?

Both publish a 131K-token context window.

Which is better for coding, Llama 3.1 8B Instruct or Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3?

The two models do not share a coding benchmark board on ModelCap yet, so no head-to-head coding score is published; the ModelCap Index position is the closest overall signal.

Are Llama 3.1 8B Instruct and Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 open-weight models?

Llama 3.1 8B Instruct: Gated access. Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3: Restricted license. Open weights mean the checkpoint can be downloaded and self-hosted under its licence; API-only models are available solely through hosted endpoints.

Where can I run Llama 3.1 8B Instruct and Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3?

ModelCap currently lists 5 API providers for Llama 3.1 8B Instruct and 0 for Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3, from the OpenRouter catalogue snapshot the site serves; each model page lists the providers and their prices.

How current is this Llama 3.1 8B Instruct vs Llama 3.1 Nemotron Safety Guard 8B v3 comparison?

Every figure comes from the sealed ModelCap dataset published 12 September 2026; the page re-renders within a minute of each data refresh, and the ModelCap Index positions are the same ones shown on the live rankings.

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