Noometry

Model comparison

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) vs Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) is the stronger model overall, scoring 48.6 to 43.0 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct costs 1.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)'s lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 18 shared benchmarks.

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) xAI

48.6

Rank #54 Confirmed

Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct Alibaba (Qwen)

43.0

Rank #102 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) scores higher in 7 categories and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct in 1 category; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) leads 52.3 to 31.1.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 75% for Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) and 66.7% for Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct.
  • Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is cheaper at $0.50 / $2 per million input/output tokens, against $1.25 / $2.50 for Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning).
  • Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
  • Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
ProviderxAIAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index48.643.0
Released2026-02-172025-09
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M131K
Max output30K33K
Input $ / M tokens$1.25$0.50
Output $ / M tokens$2.50$2
Results tracked4625

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Category by category

Coding Too close to call

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 42.1 (#112), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 42.5 (#98)

BenchmarkGrok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Coding14591440
LMArena WebDev1375—
WeirdML52.3%—
ALE-Bench1,150—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 34.4 (#46), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: —

BenchmarkGrok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
Terminal-Bench57.3%—
τ²-bench Banking18%—
LMArena Search1189—
Vending-Bench 24,663—

Reasoning Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) leads

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 52.3 (#32), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 31.1 (#81)

BenchmarkGrok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
Kagi LLM Benchmark75%66.7%
LMArena Hard Prompts14511428
ARC-AGI-265.1%—
NYT Connections (extended)85.4%—
ARC-AGI-189.5%—
Chess Puzzles24%—
Thematic Generalization63.8%—
DTBench90.1%—
LMCA38.7%—
Epoch Capabilities Index151.98—
ForecastBench61.4—

Math Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) leads

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 48.2 (#65), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 38.8 (#126)

BenchmarkGrok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Math14551440
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)44.9%—
FrontierMath Tier 417.1%—
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202592.2%—
ProofBench14%—
Omni-MATH—46.7%

Knowledge Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) leads

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 52.8 (#60), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 41.8 (#106)

BenchmarkGrok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Expert14391417
GPQA Diamond89.3%—
SimpleQA Verified30.2%—
MMLU-Pro—78.6%
Vectara Hallucination Rate—9.3%
GPQA (HELM)—63%

Multimodal Not comparable

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 33.3 (#98), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: —

BenchmarkGrok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Vision1263—
Blueprint-Bench 20%—
LMArena Document1416—

Multilingual Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) leads

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 54.5 (#40), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 52.1 (#93)

BenchmarkGrok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Non-English14411407
LMArena Chinese14811460
LMArena French14761413
LMArena German14651417
LMArena Japanese14491395
LMArena Korean14171364
LMArena Russian14581404
LMArena Spanish14431435

Instruction Following Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) leads

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 74.8 (#83), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 70.8 (#159)

BenchmarkGrok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Instruction Following14201389
IFEval—81%

Long Context Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) leads

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 45.5 (#34), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 37.0 (#223)

BenchmarkGrok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Longer Query14371403
Fiction.LiveBench—55.6%
CL-bench22.2%—
CL-bench Life11.9%—

Writing & Preference Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) leads

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 65.7 (#44), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 58.0 (#121)

BenchmarkGrok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Text14511417
LMArena Creative Writing14381334
LMArena Multi-Turn14561416
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1574—
WildBench—80.7%

Frequently asked questions

Is Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) better than Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct?

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) is the stronger model overall, scoring 48.6 to 43.0 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct costs 1.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)'s lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) or Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct?

Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is cheaper. It lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $2 per million output tokens; Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) lists at $1.25 and $2.50.

Is Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) or Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (42.1 vs 42.5); test both on your own repository before choosing.

Which has the bigger context window?

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) does, with 1M tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct share?

18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) has 46 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct has 25.

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