Model comparison

GPT-5 Nano vs Qwen3 8B

GPT-5 Nano and Qwen3 8B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (33.5 vs 33.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Last verified . 9 shared benchmarks.

GPT-5 Nano OpenAI

33.5

Rank #241 Confirmed

Qwen3 8B Alibaba (Qwen)

33.7

Rank #238 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 9 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-5 Nano scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3 8B in 6 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in long context, where Qwen3 8B leads 37.9 to 31.3.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 81.1% for GPT-5 Nano and 56.1% for Qwen3 8B.
  • GPT-5 Nano is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.40 per million input/output tokens, against $0.18 / $0.70 for Qwen3 8B.
  • GPT-5 Nano accepts more context: 400K tokens versus 131K.
  • Qwen3 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

GPT-5 Nano and Qwen3 8B specifications
GPT-5 NanoQwen3 8B
ProviderOpenAIAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index33.533.7
Released2025-08-072025-04
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window400K131K
Max output128K8K
Input $ / M tokens$0.05$0.18
Output $ / M tokens$0.40$0.70
Results tracked4911

Sponsored placements are available on pages like this one. Advertise on Noometry

Category by category

Coding Too close to call

GPT-5 Nano: 33.6 (#254), Qwen3 8B: 34.0 (#248)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5 NanoQwen3 8B
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)34.8%—
SciCode—22.6%
WeirdML38.1%—
LMArena Coding1351—
ALE-Bench718.67—

Agentic & Tool Use Qwen3 8B leads

GPT-5 Nano: 25.8 (#106), Qwen3 8B: 30.2 (#78)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5 NanoQwen3 8B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard51.5%42.6%
Terminal-Bench21.8%—

Reasoning Too close to call

GPT-5 Nano: 16.3 (#306), Qwen3 8B: 16.6 (#303)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5 NanoQwen3 8B
Chess Puzzles27%5%
DTBench62.7%59.7%
LMCA7.9%8.8%
Epoch Capabilities Index139.38136.17
ARC-AGI-22.6%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark62.2%—
ARC-AGI-120.7%—
CritPt—0%
LMArena Hard Prompts1328—
Mystery Game Puzzles9%—
ForecastBench59.1—

Math Qwen3 8B leads

GPT-5 Nano: 29.4 (#241), Qwen3 8B: 34.9 (#191)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5 NanoQwen3 8B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202581.1%56.1%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)20%—
FrontierMath Tier 42.4%—
ProofBench12%—
Omni-MATH54.6%—
LMArena Math1317—
MATH Level 595.2%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)8.3%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)2.1%—

Knowledge Too close to call

GPT-5 Nano: 35.9 (#178), Qwen3 8B: 36.1 (#173)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5 NanoQwen3 8B
GPQA Diamond69.4%56.8%
Vectara Hallucination Rate10.5%4.8%
SimpleQA Verified11.7%—
MMLU-Pro77.8%—
GPQA (HELM)67.9%—
LMArena Expert1321—

Multimodal Not comparable

GPT-5 Nano: 31.3 (#108), Qwen3 8B: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5 NanoQwen3 8B
LMArena Vision1159—
VPCT37.2%—

Multilingual Not comparable

GPT-5 Nano: 45.3 (#172), Qwen3 8B: —

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5 NanoQwen3 8B
LMArena Non-English1313—
LMArena Chinese1356—
LMArena German1327—
LMArena Japanese1226—
LMArena Korean1269—
LMArena Russian1296—
LMArena Spanish1360—

Instruction Following Not comparable

GPT-5 Nano: 75.0 (#79), Qwen3 8B: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5 NanoQwen3 8B
IFEval93.2%—
LMArena Instruction Following1306—

Long Context Qwen3 8B leads

GPT-5 Nano: 31.3 (#281), Qwen3 8B: 37.9 (#210)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5 NanoQwen3 8B
Fiction.LiveBench44.4%62.1%
LMArena Longer Query1312—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

GPT-5 Nano: 39.1 (#249), Qwen3 8B: —

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5 NanoQwen3 8B
LMArena Text1320—
LMArena Creative Writing1249—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing705—
WildBench80.6%—
LMArena Multi-Turn1311—

Frequently asked questions

Is GPT-5 Nano better than Qwen3 8B?

GPT-5 Nano and Qwen3 8B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (33.5 vs 33.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Which is cheaper, GPT-5 Nano or Qwen3 8B?

GPT-5 Nano is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.40 per million output tokens; Qwen3 8B lists at $0.18 and $0.70.

Is GPT-5 Nano or Qwen3 8B better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (33.6 vs 34.0); test both on your own repository before choosing.

Which has the bigger context window?

GPT-5 Nano does, with 400K tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do GPT-5 Nano and Qwen3 8B share?

9 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-5 Nano has 49 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 8B has 11.

Related comparisons

Go deeper