Model comparison

GPT-4.1 vs Qwen3 8B

GPT-4.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 35.9 to 33.7 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 8B costs 11× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-4.1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 9 shared benchmarks.

GPT-4.1 OpenAI

35.9

Rank #219 Confirmed

Qwen3 8B Alibaba (Qwen)

33.7

Rank #238 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 9 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-4.1 scores higher in 4 categories and Qwen3 8B in 2 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3 8B leads 34.9 to 22.3.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 38.3% for GPT-4.1 and 56.1% for Qwen3 8B.
  • Qwen3 8B is cheaper at $0.18 / $0.70 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $8 for GPT-4.1.
  • GPT-4.1 accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 131K.
  • Qwen3 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

GPT-4.1 and Qwen3 8B specifications
GPT-4.1Qwen3 8B
ProviderOpenAIAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index35.933.7
Released2025-04-142025-04
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1.05M131K
Max output33K8K
Input $ / M tokens$2$0.18
Output $ / M tokens$8$0.70
Results tracked5211

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Category by category

Coding Too close to call

GPT-4.1: 34.4 (#238), Qwen3 8B: 34.0 (#248)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-4.1Qwen3 8B
SWE-bench Verified48.5%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)39.6%—
Aider Polyglot52.4%—
SciCode—22.6%
WeirdML39%—
LMArena Coding1391—
CadEval42%—
ALE-Bench558.1—

Agentic & Tool Use GPT-4.1 leads

GPT-4.1: 34.7 (#43), Qwen3 8B: 30.2 (#78)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-4.1Qwen3 8B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard54%42.6%

Reasoning Qwen3 8B leads

GPT-4.1: 11.7 (#339), Qwen3 8B: 16.6 (#303)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-4.1Qwen3 8B
Chess Puzzles6%5%
DTBench68.3%59.7%
LMCA25.6%8.8%
Epoch Capabilities Index136.78136.17
ARC-AGI-20.4%—
SimpleBench27%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark52.3%—
ARC-AGI-15.5%—
CritPt—0%
EnigmaEval2.2%—
LMArena Hard Prompts1384—
ForecastBench61.5—

Math Qwen3 8B leads

GPT-4.1: 22.3 (#280), Qwen3 8B: 34.9 (#191)

Knowledge Too close to call

GPT-4.1: 37.1 (#160), Qwen3 8B: 36.1 (#173)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-4.1Qwen3 8B
GPQA Diamond66.9%56.8%
Vectara Hallucination Rate5.6%4.8%
Humanity's Last Exam5.4%—
SimpleQA Verified31.1%—
MMLU-Pro81.1%—
GPQA (HELM)65.9%—
LMArena Expert1364—

Multimodal Not comparable

GPT-4.1: 38.2 (#67), Qwen3 8B: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-4.1Qwen3 8B
LMArena Vision1211—
GeoBench72%—

Multilingual Not comparable

GPT-4.1: 49.4 (#133), Qwen3 8B: —

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-4.1Qwen3 8B
LMArena Non-English1370—
LMArena Chinese1382—
LMArena French1382—
LMArena German1381—
LMArena Japanese1319—
LMArena Korean1339—
LMArena Russian1377—
LMArena Spanish1376—

Instruction Following Not comparable

GPT-4.1: 71.3 (#153), Qwen3 8B: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-4.1Qwen3 8B
IFEval83.8%—
LMArena Instruction Following1367—

Long Context GPT-4.1 leads

GPT-4.1: 40.0 (#163), Qwen3 8B: 37.9 (#210)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-4.1Qwen3 8B
Fiction.LiveBench63.9%62.1%
LMArena Longer Query1385—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

GPT-4.1: 57.6 (#125), Qwen3 8B: —

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-4.1Qwen3 8B
LMArena Text1383—
LMArena Creative Writing1363—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1420—
WildBench85.4%—
LMArena Multi-Turn1398—

Frequently asked questions

Is GPT-4.1 better than Qwen3 8B?

GPT-4.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 35.9 to 33.7 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 8B costs 11× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-4.1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, GPT-4.1 or Qwen3 8B?

Qwen3 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.18 per million input tokens and $0.70 per million output tokens; GPT-4.1 lists at $2 and $8.

Is GPT-4.1 or Qwen3 8B better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (34.4 vs 34.0); test both on your own repository before choosing.

Which has the bigger context window?

GPT-4.1 does, with 1.05M tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do GPT-4.1 and Qwen3 8B share?

9 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-4.1 has 52 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 8B has 11.

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