Meta · language model
Llama 3.2 1B Instruct: pricing, context and benchmarks
Llama 3.2 1B Instruct is Meta's model released on September 25, 2024. It costs $0.03 per million input tokens and $0.2 per million output tokens, with a 60K-token context window. No independent score has been published for it so far.
What you need to know about Llama 3.2 1B Instruct
Meta, based in United States, put Llama 3.2 1B Instruct online on September 25, 2024. It accepts text as input and produces text. Its context window reaches 60,000 tokens, larger than 9 % of the models in the registry, and it can write up to 54,000 tokens in one go.
Released more than 2 years ago, it belongs to a generation most vendors have since superseded.
Llama 3.2 1B Instruct pricing
On OpenRouter, Llama 3.2 1B Instruct costs $0.03 per million input tokens and $0.2 per million output tokens. Counting three tokens read for every token written, its average price is $0.071 per million, more expensive than 5 % of paid models (10.7 times cheaper than the median of $0.76).
A concrete example: a task that sends 2,000 tokens (about 1,500 words) and receives a 500-token answer costs $0.0002. At 1,000 tasks a day, budget $5 a month. The price calculator redoes this with your own volumes.
Performance and benchmarks
Epoch AI does not yet publish a capabilities index for Llama 3.2 1B Instruct. We therefore show no made-up performance rating: only price, context and features count towards its score.
Scores published by Epoch AI on the benchmarks the site tracks:
| Benchmark | What it measures | Score | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | PhD-level science questions | 23.9 % | Sep 24, 2024 |
| OTIS Mock AIME | maths competition problems | 0.6 % | Sep 24, 2024 |
Features, privacy and local use
- It does not support tool calling: it is not suited to driving an AI agent that has to act.
- Its knowledge stops at December 2023.
Its weights are open and downloadable from Hugging Face (llama3.2 licence): you can run it on your own machines without sending your data to a third party. With 1,235,814,400 billion parameters, it needs about 690,565,109 GB of memory at 4-bit quantisation. Check with the VRAM calculator. It was downloaded 3,708,648 times on Hugging Face last month.
Other Meta models
| Model | Released | Avg. price | ECI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Llama Guard 4 12B | Apr 30, 2025 | $0.18 | — |
| Llama 4 Maverick | Apr 5, 2025 | $0.3 | 132.2 |
| Llama 4 Scout | Apr 5, 2025 | $0.15 | 129.6 |
| Llama 3.3 70B Instruct | Dec 6, 2024 | $0.16 | — |
| Llama 3.2 3B Instruct | Sep 25, 2024 | $0.12 | — |
| Llama 3.1 70B Instruct | Jul 23, 2024 | $0.4 | — |
| Llama 3.1 8B Instruct | Jul 23, 2024 | $0.06 | — |
Verdict
Computed score: 57/100, from public data (performance, price, context, features).
Strengths
- Low price: cheaper than 95 % of paid models.
- Open weights: self-hostable, your data stays with you.
Limitations
- No tool calling: unusable as an agent's brain.
- No independent score published: performance cannot be verified.
- Older generation, often replaced by a newer model from the same vendor.
- Text only: reads neither images nor files.
Avoid if…
- you are building an agent that must call tools;
- you analyse long documents in one go;
- you want to host it on a single consumer computer (≈ 690,565,109 GB needed at 4-bit).
Alternatives
- Mistral Small 3$0.06
- Hy-MT2-1.8B$0.08
- Phi 4$0.09
- MythoMax 13B$0.09
- Reka Edge$0.1
- Schematron V2 Turbo$0.06
Comparisons and tools
Learn more
Frequently asked questions
How much does Llama 3.2 1B Instruct cost?
$0.03 per million input tokens and $0.2 per million output tokens on OpenRouter (checked October 25, 2026). A task with 2,000 tokens read and 500 written costs $0.0002.
How big is Llama 3.2 1B Instruct's context window?
60,000 tokens, roughly 45,000 words, with a maximum of 54,000 output tokens.
Can Llama 3.2 1B Instruct run locally?
Yes, its weights are published under the llama3.2 licence. Expect about 690,565,109 GB of memory at 4-bit.
Is Llama 3.2 1B Instruct suitable for an AI agent?
No: without tool calling it cannot act, only answer.
What are the alternatives to Llama 3.2 1B Instruct?
The closest models on price and performance are Mistral Small 3, Hy-MT2-1.8B, and Phi 4.
Related articles
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- LLM benchmarks: how to read model rankingsOctober 24, 2026
- Running a local LLM: hardware, software, and limitationsOctober 24, 2026
- Open-source or closed models for your AI agents?October 5, 2026
Neutrality. No affiliate links. No vendor pays to be reviewed, rated or ranked. Reviews are directed by François Chollet, neutral and factual, and every data point is dated and sourced. How we score