Compact 8B multilingual vision-language model proficient in image understanding, visual OCR, and chart analysis across 23 languages.
Technical Specifications
- Provider
- Cohere
- Category
- open-source
- Release Date
- 2025-03
- Batch API Discount
- 50% off async batch
- Consumer Subscription
- Free / Self-Hosted
- Reasoning Effort Control
- Fixed
- Structured Outputs
- Yes
- Output Modalities
- text
- Official Documentation
- Visit Official Docs ↗
Data Privacy, Licensing & Deployment Governance
Official Provider Release Intelligence, API Quotas & Agentic Specs
- Official API Model ID (SDK String)
- aya-vision-8b
- Supported SDK & API Protocol
- OpenAI-Compatible REST / vLLM / SGLang / HuggingFace TGI
- Lifecycle & Deprecation Status
- Active GA (Guaranteed support through 2027+)
- Production Rate Limits (RPM & TPM)
- Unlimited (Hardware-bound on self-hosted GPU) / 10,000 RPM Cloud · Unlimited local throughput / 10M+ TPM Managed Cloud
- Long-Context Pricing Tier (>128K / >200K)
- Flat rate ($0.1/1M in) across full 16K window
- Prompt Cache Write & TTL Policy
- Cached input at $0.03/1M tokens
- Computer Use & Browser GUI Agent
- API / CLI Tool-Use & DOM Agent ready (no raw pixel desktop click loop)
- MCP & Parallel Tool Calling
- Native MCP Client/Server ready · Parallel function calling · 100% Strict JSON Schema
- Web Search Grounding & Code Sandbox
- Supported via external Tavily/Exa Search & E2B/Docker Sandbox tools
- Fine-Tuning & Distillation Support
- Full Weights SFT, LoRA, QLoRA, DPO & GRPO RL (Unsloth / Axolotl / Llama-Factory)
- Multimodal Tokenization Billing
- Text BPE (~4 chars/token) · Vision (~258–765 tokens per image tile)
- Weights Precision & Quantization
- BF16 / FP16, FP8 Dynamic, INT4 AWQ / GPTQ, GGUF (Q4_K_M / Q8_0)
- Minimum GPU VRAM Requirement
- 5 GB VRAM (4-bit Quantized) · 17 GB VRAM (Native BF16)
- Supported Inference Engines
- vLLM, SGLang, Ollama, llama.cpp, TensorRT-LLM, HuggingFace TGI
- System Card & Safety Framework
- Open-Weights System Card + Customizable Guardrail Layer (Llama Guard / ShieldGemma)
- Enterprise Compliance (SOC2 / HIPAA / ZDR)
- 100% Air-Gapped On-Premises / Private VPC · Full HIPAA, GDPR & SOC2 Control
Aya Vision 8B Cost, Context, Hardware & API Integration
Pay-as-you-go API is cheaper for this volume (saves $12.35/mo vs $20 flat plan).
Break-even point: ~1,307 requests/day equals $20/month.
Same Monthly Workload Cost Across Popular Reference Models
Live Prompt Paste Tokenizer & Cost Counter
Paste real system instructions, JSON schemas, or code to measure BPE token counts across tokenizers.
Hybrid Prompt Routing Cascade Simulator
Route routine queries to a fast lightweight model ($0.15/1M) and escalate only complex reasoning turns to Aya Vision 8B:
Benchmark Scores & 6-Axis Capability Radar
- SWE-bench Verified
- 22%
- GPQA Diamond
- 41%
- MMLU-Pro
- 64%
- HumanEval
- 68%
- Chatbot Arena Elo
- 1220pts
Strengths
- Native OCR and visual document QA in diverse global scripts and languages
- Lightweight 8B parameter size easily deployed on edge workstations
- Open weights under permissive license for global accessibility
Limitations & Trade-offs
- 16K context window is smaller than 128K document standards
- Lower multi-step reasoning capabilities than 32B edition
Editorial Assessment
An exceptional open multilingual vision model opening visual AI to low-resource languages.
Best for: Global document triage, multilingual receipt and invoice OCR, and mobile visual apps
Compare Aya Vision 8B
Frequently Asked Questions about Aya Vision 8B
How much does the Aya Vision 8B API cost per 1M tokens?+
Aya Vision 8B by Cohere is priced at $0.1 per 1M input tokens and $0.25 per 1M output tokens. With prompt caching enabled, cached input tokens cost $0.03 per 1M tokens, and asynchronous Batch API requests receive a 50% discount.
Should I use a $20/month subscription or the Aya Vision 8B pay-as-you-go API?+
A flat $20/month consumer subscription is predictable for daily interactive chat and manual coding. However, if you are building software, running automated workflows, or sending low-to-moderate volume with prompt caching enabled, the pay-as-you-go API is typically far more cost-effective and offers higher rate limits without manual UI caps.
How many words and pages fit in Aya Vision 8B's context window?+
Aya Vision 8B features a 16K tokens context window, which equals approximately 12,000 English words or ~32 standard single-spaced pages in a single prompt. Its maximum output generation per turn is 4,096 tokens.
Can I run Aya Vision 8B locally on my own GPU (Open Weights)?+
Yes, Aya Vision 8B (8B) releases open weights that can be self-hosted locally or on private cloud GPUs using vLLM, Ollama, SGLang, or llama.cpp.
Does Cohere train on data sent to the Aya Vision 8B API, and is commercial use allowed?+
100% Isolated when self-hosted on private GPUs or VPC. License tier: Open-Weights Research & Commercial License. Full commercial ownership of generated outputs. Supported deployment channels include: Self-Hosted GPU (vLLM / Ollama), Private VPC, or Managed Serverless API.
How does Aya Vision 8B perform on coding and reasoning benchmarks?+
Aya Vision 8B achieves a composite Intelligence Index of 38/100, scoring 22% on SWE-bench Verified, 41% on GPQA Diamond, 64% on MMLU-Pro, and 1220 pts on Chatbot Arena Elo.
What is Aya Vision 8B best used for?+
Aya Vision 8B is best suited for: Global document triage, multilingual receipt and invoice OCR, and mobile visual apps. Assessment: An exceptional open multilingual vision model opening visual AI to low-resource languages.
Cohere Family Lineage, Routing Tiers & Upgrade Path
Step down to a lighter sibling for high-volume routing or step up to Cohere's flagship reasoning tier:
North Mini Code
Command A Plus
Command A Reasoning
Command A Translate
Command A Vision
Command A
AI Glossary & Architecture Concepts
View full glossary →Key machine learning concepts and benchmarks relevant to Aya Vision 8B:
The basic unit of text that a language model processes, typically representing about 3 to 4 English characters or roughly 0.75 words. For example, the sentence "Artificial intelligence is fast" breaks down into about 5 tokens.
A standardized evaluation suite used to objectively measure and rank an AI model's capabilities across specific tasks — such as SWE-bench Verified for software engineering, AIME for competitive math, or MMLU for general knowledge.
The maximum number of tokens a model can consider at once — both the input it reads and the output it writes. A 1,000,000-token context window can hold roughly 750,000 English words in a single request.
The ability of a language model to recognize when an external capability is needed and output structured JSON arguments to invoke external APIs, databases, or terminal commands. The runtime executes the tool and passes results back to the model.
An open standard created by Anthropic that allows AI applications and agents to connect seamlessly to local filesystems, development environments, and third-party APIs via standardized server interfaces.
A cost and latency optimization where inference providers store pre-computed attention states for repeated prompt prefixes. Reusing cached tokens typically slashes API input costs by 50% to 90% and cuts TTFT substantially.
Benchmark scores, token prices, and rate limits evolve rapidly as AI labs release model updates. Always verify current specifications and pricing on the official provider documentation.