Model comparison

GPT-5.6 Sol vs Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct

GPT-5.6 Sol is the stronger model overall, scoring 65.0 to 29.3 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.

GPT-5.6 Sol OpenAI

65.0

Rank #7 Confirmed

Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct Microsoft

29.3

Rank #314 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-5.6 Sol scores higher in 8 categories and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where GPT-5.6 Sol leads 74.8 to 14.8.
  • Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

GPT-5.6 Sol and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct specifications
GPT-5.6 SolPhi 3 Small 8k Instruct
ProviderOpenAIMicrosoft
Noometry Index65.029.3
Released2026-07-092024-04-23
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1.05M—
Max output128K—
Input $ / M tokens$4—
Output $ / M tokens$20—
Results tracked6532

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Category by category

Coding GPT-5.6 Sol leads

GPT-5.6 Sol: 65.1 (#7), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 27.9 (#318)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolPhi 3 Small 8k Instruct
LMArena Coding14981101
DeepSWE72.7%—
FrontierCode47.5%—
CursorBench41.7%—
LMArena WebDev1618—
FrontierSWE32.2%—
SciCode57.1%—
GSO76.5%—
WeirdML89.4%—
LiveBench Coding—20.3%
MirrorCode20%—
ALE-Bench2,177—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

GPT-5.6 Sol: 50.3 (#7), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolPhi 3 Small 8k Instruct
APEX-Agents51.4%—
OSWorld 2.027.3%—
τ²-bench Banking46.9%—
PostTrainBench36.2%—
BALROG60%—
GBAEval52.6%—
GDP.pdf30.7%—
LMArena Search1257—
Vending-Bench 29,619—

Reasoning GPT-5.6 Sol leads

GPT-5.6 Sol: 74.8 (#8), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 14.8 (#323)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolPhi 3 Small 8k Instruct
LMArena Hard Prompts14841100
ARC-AGI-292.5%—
SimpleBench71.7%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark67%—
NYT Connections (extended)93.8%—
ARC-AGI-197.5%—
CritPt32.3%—
Chess Puzzles64%—
EnigmaEval37.1%—
EBR-Bench44.8%—
LiveBench Reasoning—15.9%
Mystery Game Puzzles58%—
DTBench96%—
LiveBench Data Analysis—30.3%
LMCA59.2%—
Surface Evolver Bench93.1%—
Adversarial NLI—58.1%
Bench to the Future 30.14—
BIG-Bench Hard—79.1%
Epoch Capabilities Index161.66—
HellaSwag—77%
LiveBench—24%
WinoGrande—81.5%

Math GPT-5.6 Sol leads

GPT-5.6 Sol: 85.6 (#9), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 27.6 (#248)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolPhi 3 Small 8k Instruct
LMArena Math14741151
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)89.1%—
FrontierMath Tier 482.9%—
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025100%—
ProofBench83%—
LiveBench Math—17.6%
FrontierMath Erdős0%—

Knowledge GPT-5.6 Sol leads

GPT-5.6 Sol: 64.3 (#18), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 29.1 (#240)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolPhi 3 Small 8k Instruct
LMArena Expert15161067
GPQA Diamond93.5%—
SimpleQA Verified69.7%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate12.4%—
ARC (AI2) Challenge—90.7%
MMLU—75.7%
OpenBookQA—88%
TriviaQA—58.1%

Multimodal Not comparable

GPT-5.6 Sol: 48.6 (#9), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolPhi 3 Small 8k Instruct
LMArena Vision1281—
Blueprint-Bench 233.6%—
Furniture Assembly56.7%—
LMArena Document1483—

Multilingual GPT-5.6 Sol leads

GPT-5.6 Sol: 55.3 (#32), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 28.5 (#272)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolPhi 3 Small 8k Instruct
LMArena Non-English14521058
LMArena Chinese15271061
LMArena French14771135
LMArena German14761080
LMArena Japanese1471966
LMArena Korean1442894
LMArena Russian14681111
LMArena Spanish14411111

Instruction Following GPT-5.6 Sol leads

GPT-5.6 Sol: 77.7 (#16), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 51.9 (#292)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolPhi 3 Small 8k Instruct
LMArena Instruction Following14821087
LiveBench Instruction Following—47.2%

Long Context GPT-5.6 Sol leads

GPT-5.6 Sol: 45.4 (#42), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 33.0 (#267)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolPhi 3 Small 8k Instruct
LMArena Longer Query14801088

Writing & Preference GPT-5.6 Sol leads

GPT-5.6 Sol: 73.3 (#12), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 31.1 (#284)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolPhi 3 Small 8k Instruct
LMArena Text14571110
LMArena Creative Writing14481083
LMArena Multi-Turn14601068
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1972—
EQ-Bench 41250—
LiveBench Language—12.9%

Frequently asked questions

Is GPT-5.6 Sol better than Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct?

GPT-5.6 Sol is the stronger model overall, scoring 65.0 to 29.3 on the Noometry Index.

Is GPT-5.6 Sol or Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct better for coding?

GPT-5.6 Sol scores higher on coding benchmarks: 65.1 versus 27.9 in the Noometry coding category.

How many benchmarks do GPT-5.6 Sol and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-5.6 Sol has 65 scored results on Noometry and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct has 32.

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