Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs ZAYA1-8B

Pick ZAYA1-8B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude 3.5 Sonnet only becomes the better choice if you need the larger 200K context window or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

ZAYA1-8B is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 62 to 41. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

ZAYA1-8B's sharpest advantage is in knowledge, where it averages 73.1 against 59.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is GPQA, 59.4% to 71%.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet is also the more expensive model on tokens at $3.00 input / $15.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.00 input / $0.00 output per 1M tokens for ZAYA1-8B. That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. ZAYA1-8B is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude 3.5 Sonnet is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. Claude 3.5 Sonnet gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 131K for ZAYA1-8B.