The closest alternative to R1 Distill Llama 70B is DeepSeek V4 Pro — comparable intelligence (39.3 vs —); for a cheaper option, MiniMax M3 runs $0.300/M vs $0.800/M; for more speed, Morph V3 Large hits 2.6k t/s; and the best open-weight substitute is MiniMax M3.
DeepSeek V4 Pro is the closest alternative to R1 Distill Llama 70B, with an Intelligence Index of 39.3 (R1 Distill Llama 70B scores —) at $0.435 per million input tokens.
Yes — MiniMax M3 costs $0.300 per million input tokens versus $0.800 for R1 Distill Llama 70B, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
MiniMax M3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to R1 Distill Llama 70B — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 54.7 on intelligence.