Model comparison
GPT-5 Nano vs Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct
GPT-5 Nano and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (33.4 vs 32.4), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 15 shared benchmarks.
MicrosoftSummary
- They share 15 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-5 Nano scores higher in 5 categories and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct in 3 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in instruction following, where GPT-5 Nano leads 75.2 to 57.8.
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 33.4 | 32.4 |
| Released | 2025-08-07 | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 400K | — |
| Max output | 128K | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.05 | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.40 | — |
| Results tracked | 48 | 17 |
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Category by category
Coding GPT-5 Nano leads
GPT-5 Nano: 33.3 (#248), Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 32.3 (#263)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1351 | 1130 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 34.8% | — |
| WeirdML | 38.1% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 718.67 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
GPT-5 Nano: 25.6 (#99), Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: —
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 21.8% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 51.5% | — |
Reasoning Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct leads
GPT-5 Nano: 16.4 (#291), Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 20.8 (#214)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1329 | 1127 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 2.6% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 62.2% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 20.7% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 27% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 9% | — |
| DTBench | 62.7% | — |
| LMCA | 7.9% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 139.39 | — |
| ForecastBench | 59.1 | — |
Math Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct leads
GPT-5 Nano: 29.1 (#221), Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 30.9 (#202)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1318 | 1173 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 20% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 2.4% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 81.1% | — |
| ProofBench | 12% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 54.6% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 95.2% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 8.3% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 2.1% | — |
Knowledge GPT-5 Nano leads
GPT-5 Nano: 35.8 (#166), Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 29.6 (#226)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1321 | 1108 |
| GPQA Diamond | 69.4% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 11.7% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 77.8% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.5% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 67.9% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
GPT-5 Nano: 30.7 (#102), Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: —
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1159 | — |
| VPCT | 37.2% | — |
Multilingual GPT-5 Nano leads
GPT-5 Nano: 45.5 (#167), Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 30.8 (#258)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1313 | 1094 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1355 | 1108 |
| LMArena German | 1329 | 1101 |
| LMArena Korean | 1269 | 954 |
| LMArena Russian | 1296 | 1145 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1360 | 1095 |
| LMArena French | — | 1109 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1042 |
Instruction Following GPT-5 Nano leads
GPT-5 Nano: 75.2 (#72), Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 57.8 (#263)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1306 | 1114 |
| IFEval | 93.2% | — |
Long Context Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct leads
GPT-5 Nano: 31.3 (#275), Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 33.9 (#250)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1313 | 1120 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 44.4% | — |
Writing & Preference GPT-5 Nano leads
GPT-5 Nano: 39.4 (#244), Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 34.3 (#267)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1320 | 1138 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1250 | 1106 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1311 | 1088 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 705 | — |
| WildBench | 80.6% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is GPT-5 Nano better than Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct?
GPT-5 Nano and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (33.4 vs 32.4), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Is GPT-5 Nano or Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct better for coding?
GPT-5 Nano scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.3 versus 32.3 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do GPT-5 Nano and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct share?
15 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-5 Nano has 48 scored results on Noometry and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct has 17.