The closest alternative to Llama 3.1 8B Instruct is Olmo 3 32B Think — comparable intelligence (12.1 vs 11.8); for a cheaper option, Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) runs Free/M vs $0.020/M; for more speed, gpt-oss-120b (free) hits 554 t/s; and the best open-weight substitute is MiniMax M3.
Olmo 3 32B Think is the closest alternative to Llama 3.1 8B Instruct, with an Intelligence Index of 12.1 (Llama 3.1 8B Instruct scores 11.8) at $0.150 per million input tokens.
Yes — Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) costs Free per million input tokens versus $0.020 for Llama 3.1 8B Instruct, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
MiniMax M3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to Llama 3.1 8B Instruct — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 54.7 on intelligence.