o3-mini vs Llama 3 70B

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across knowledge, coding, math, and reasoning.

o3-mini is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 56 to 51. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

o3-mini's sharpest advantage is in knowledge, where it averages 82.1 against 47.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Verified, 49.3 to 9.

o3-mini is the reasoning model in the pair, while Llama 3 70B 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. o3-mini gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for Llama 3 70B.

Quick Verdict

Pick o3-mini if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Llama 3 70B only becomes the better choice if you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Knowledge

o3-mini

o3-mini

82.1

Llama 3 70B

47.2

86.9
MMLU
58
77.2
GPQA
58
-
SuperGPQA
56
-
OpenBookQA
54
-
MMLU-Pro
55
-
HLE
2

Coding

o3-mini

o3-mini

49.3

Llama 3 70B

26

49.3
SWE-bench Verified
9
-
HumanEval
50
-
LiveCodeBench
19

Mathematics

o3-mini

o3-mini

87.3

Llama 3 70B

58.8

87.3
AIME 2024
60
-
AIME 2023
58
-
AIME 2025
59
-
HMMT Feb 2023
54
-
HMMT Feb 2024
56
-
HMMT Feb 2025
55
-
BRUMO 2025
57
-
MATH-500
71

Reasoning

Llama 3 70B
-
SimpleQA
56
-
MuSR
54
-
BBH
74

Instruction Following

o3-mini

o3-mini

93.9

Llama 3 70B

77

93.9
IFEval
77

Multilingual

Llama 3 70B
-
MGSM
72

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, o3-mini or Llama 3 70B?

o3-mini is ahead overall, 56 to 51. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Verified, where the scores are 49.3 and 9.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, o3-mini or Llama 3 70B?

o3-mini has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 82.1 versus 47.2. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, o3-mini or Llama 3 70B?

o3-mini has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 49.3 versus 26. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, o3-mini or Llama 3 70B?

o3-mini has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 87.3 versus 58.8. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, o3-mini or Llama 3 70B?

o3-mini has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 93.9 versus 77. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 9, 2026

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