Model comparison

Llama 3.2 3B vs Qwen2.5 7B Instruct

Llama 3.2 3B and Qwen2.5 7B Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (28.9 vs 29.0), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 3 shared benchmarks.

Llama 3.2 3B

Summary

They share 3 benchmarks with published results for both. Llama 3.2 3B scores higher in 3 categories and Qwen2.5 7B Instruct in 4 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen2.5 7B Instruct leads 48.8 to 24.7.
The biggest single-benchmark swing is BigCodeBench Complete: 28.3% for Llama 3.2 3B and 46.1% for Qwen2.5 7B Instruct.
Llama 3.2 3B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.33 per million input/output tokens, against $0.17 / $0.70 for Qwen2.5 7B Instruct.

Side by side

Llama 3.2 3B and Qwen2.5 7B Instruct specifications
	Llama 3.2 3B	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
Provider	Meta	Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index	28.9	29.0
Released	2024-09-24	2024-09
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	131K	131K
Max output	118K	8K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.05	$0.17
Output $ / M tokens	$0.33	$0.70
Results tracked	18	15

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

Category by category

Coding Qwen2.5 7B Instruct leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 27.6 (#319), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 36.5 (#208)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
BigCodeBench Instruct	23.4%	37.6%
BigCodeBench Complete	28.3%	46.1%
LMArena Coding	1098	—

Agentic & Tool Use Qwen2.5 7B Instruct leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 20.1 (#143), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 23.8 (#124)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
BALROG	10.1%	7.8%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	21.9%	—

Reasoning Llama 3.2 3B leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 21.0 (#228), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 14.8 (#322)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
Chess Puzzles	—	0%
LMArena Hard Prompts	1095	—
DTBench	—	47.7%
LMCA	—	6.4%
Epoch Capabilities Index	—	118.51

Math Llama 3.2 3B leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 32.4 (#214), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 12.6 (#306)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	2.5%
Omni-MATH	—	29.4%
LMArena Math	1126	—

Knowledge Llama 3.2 3B leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 29.7 (#235), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 17.0 (#286)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
GPQA Diamond	—	35.5%
MMLU-Pro	—	53.9%
GPQA (HELM)	—	34.1%
LMArena Expert	1090	—
MMLU	—	72.9%

Multilingual Not comparable

Llama 3.2 3B: 26.2 (#281), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: —

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
LMArena Non-English	1019	—
LMArena Chinese	1017	—
LMArena German	1056	—
LMArena Russian	949	—

Instruction Following Qwen2.5 7B Instruct leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 56.0 (#275), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 63.2 (#231)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
IFEval	—	74.1%
LMArena Instruction Following	1089	—

Long Context Not comparable

Llama 3.2 3B: 33.4 (#261), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: —

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
LMArena Longer Query	1100	—

Writing & Preference Qwen2.5 7B Instruct leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 24.7 (#307), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 48.8 (#195)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
LMArena Text	1110	—
LMArena Creative Writing	1094	—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing	595	—
WildBench	—	73.1%
LMArena Multi-Turn	1105	—

Frequently asked questions

Is Llama 3.2 3B better than Qwen2.5 7B Instruct?

Llama 3.2 3B and Qwen2.5 7B Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (28.9 vs 29.0), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Which is cheaper, Llama 3.2 3B or Qwen2.5 7B Instruct?

Llama 3.2 3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.33 per million output tokens; Qwen2.5 7B Instruct lists at $0.17 and $0.70.

Is Llama 3.2 3B or Qwen2.5 7B Instruct better for coding?

Qwen2.5 7B Instruct scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.5 versus 27.6 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 131K tokens.

How many benchmarks do Llama 3.2 3B and Qwen2.5 7B Instruct share?

3 benchmarks have published results for both models. Llama 3.2 3B has 18 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2.5 7B Instruct has 15.