Model comparison

Gemma 3 27B vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct

Qwen2.5 72B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.9 to 30.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 27B costs 24× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen2.5 72B Instruct's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 24 shared benchmarks.

Gemma 3 27B Google

30.8

Rank #284 Confirmed

Qwen2.5 72B Instruct Alibaba (Qwen)

31.9

Rank #267 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 24 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 27B scores higher in 5 categories and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct in 4 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in long context, where Qwen2.5 72B Instruct leads 38.9 to 27.6.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Confabulations: 40.3% for Gemma 3 27B and 19.1% for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct.
  • Gemma 3 27B is cheaper at $0.08 / $0.16 per million input/output tokens, against $1.40 / $5.60 for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct.

Side by side

Gemma 3 27B and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct specifications
Gemma 3 27BQwen2.5 72B Instruct
ProviderGoogleAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index30.831.9
Released2025-03-112024-09
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window131K131K
Max output8K8K
Input $ / M tokens$0.08$1.40
Output $ / M tokens$0.16$5.60
Results tracked4343

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Category by category

Coding Qwen2.5 72B Instruct leads

Gemma 3 27B: 22.5 (#334), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 33.2 (#260)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkGemma 3 27BQwen2.5 72B Instruct
LMArena Coding13221292
Aider Polyglot4.9%—
SciCode21.2%—
WeirdML—16%
BigCodeBench Instruct—45.8%
LiveBench Coding39.9%—
BigCodeBench Complete—55.9%

Agentic & Tool Use Gemma 3 27B leads

Gemma 3 27B: 25.1 (#110), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.1 (#133)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkGemma 3 27BQwen2.5 72B Instruct
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard29.5%—
TheAgentCompany—5.7%
BALROG—16.2%
METR Time Horizons—35.8%

Reasoning Qwen2.5 72B Instruct leads

Gemma 3 27B: 16.7 (#301), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.3 (#199)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkGemma 3 27BQwen2.5 72B Instruct
LMArena Hard Prompts13401271
DTBench52.5%62.9%
LMCA12.3%13.4%
Epoch Capabilities Index130.04129
Kagi LLM Benchmark40.4%—
CritPt0%—
Chess Puzzles0%—
LiveBench Reasoning43.8%—
LiveBench Data Analysis51.5%—
BIG-Bench Hard—79.8%
ForecastBench—57.5
HellaSwag—84.8%
LiveBench50%—
PIQA—82.6%
WinoGrande—82.3%

Math Gemma 3 27B leads

Gemma 3 27B: 25.9 (#265), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 19.3 (#287)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkGemma 3 27BQwen2.5 72B Instruct
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202522.5%8.1%
LMArena Math13121283
MATH Level 574%63.2%
Omni-MATH—33%
LiveBench Math55.4%—

Knowledge Qwen2.5 72B Instruct leads

Gemma 3 27B: 25.5 (#261), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 27.0 (#253)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkGemma 3 27BQwen2.5 72B Instruct
GPQA Diamond47.7%49.1%
Confabulations40.3%19.1%
LMArena Expert13041245
MMLU-Pro—63.1%
Vectara Hallucination Rate7.4%—
GPQA (HELM)—42.6%
ARC (AI2) Challenge—94.5%
MMLU—85.3%
TriviaQA—71.9%

Multimodal Not comparable

Gemma 3 27B: 32.6 (#100), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkGemma 3 27BQwen2.5 72B Instruct
LMArena Vision1164—
GeoBench52%—

Multilingual Gemma 3 27B leads

Gemma 3 27B: 46.9 (#155), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 41.0 (#213)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkGemma 3 27BQwen2.5 72B Instruct
LMArena Non-English13341252
LMArena Chinese13461272
LMArena French13681280
LMArena German13621234
LMArena Japanese12871180
LMArena Korean13081188
LMArena Russian13491264
LMArena Spanish13491256

Instruction Following Gemma 3 27B leads

Gemma 3 27B: 70.6 (#160), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 65.5 (#221)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkGemma 3 27BQwen2.5 72B Instruct
LMArena Instruction Following13211254
LiveBench Instruction Following74.9%—
IFEval—80.6%

Long Context Qwen2.5 72B Instruct leads

Gemma 3 27B: 27.6 (#293), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 38.9 (#188)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkGemma 3 27BQwen2.5 72B Instruct
LMArena Longer Query13331282
Fiction.LiveBench33.3%—

Writing & Preference Gemma 3 27B leads

Gemma 3 27B: 52.5 (#168), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 46.7 (#215)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkGemma 3 27BQwen2.5 72B Instruct
LMArena Text13581269
LMArena Creative Writing13461221
LMArena Multi-Turn13451272
Short-Story Creative Writing79.9%—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1266—
WildBench—80.2%
LiveBench Language34.6%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Gemma 3 27B better than Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?

Qwen2.5 72B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.9 to 30.8 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 27B costs 24× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen2.5 72B Instruct's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Gemma 3 27B or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?

Gemma 3 27B is cheaper. It lists at $0.08 per million input tokens and $0.16 per million output tokens; Qwen2.5 72B Instruct lists at $1.40 and $5.60.

Is Gemma 3 27B or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct better for coding?

Qwen2.5 72B Instruct scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.2 versus 22.5 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 131K tokens.

How many benchmarks do Gemma 3 27B and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct share?

24 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 27B has 43 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has 43.

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