Model comparison

o4-mini vs Qwen Plus

o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 37.1 on the Noometry Index. Qwen Plus costs 3.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o4-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 20 shared benchmarks.

o4-mini OpenAI

41.6

Rank #132 Confirmed

Qwen Plus Alibaba (Qwen)

37.1

Rank #210 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 20 benchmarks with published results for both. o4-mini scores higher in 7 categories and Qwen Plus in 1 category; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where o4-mini leads 40.8 to 23.3.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 81.7% for o4-mini and 17.8% for Qwen Plus.
  • Qwen Plus is cheaper at $0.40 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $1.10 / $4.40 for o4-mini.
  • Qwen Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 200K.

Side by side

o4-mini and Qwen Plus specifications
o4-miniQwen Plus
ProviderOpenAIAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index41.637.1
Released2025-04-162024-01-25
WeightsProprietaryProprietary
Context window200K1M
Max output100K33K
Input $ / M tokens$1.10$0.40
Output $ / M tokens$4.40$1.20
Results tracked6020

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

Category by category

Coding o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 40.9 (#127), Qwen Plus: 38.9 (#167)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen Plus
LMArena Coding13681328
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)45%—
Aider Polyglot72%—
GSO3.6%—
WeirdML52.6%—
CadEval62%—
ALE-Bench826.17—
AlgoTune1.72—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

o4-mini: 32.6 (#61), Qwen Plus: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen Plus
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard53.2%—
GDPval25.3%—
METR Time Horizons63.9%—

Reasoning Qwen Plus leads

o4-mini: 24.6 (#162), Qwen Plus: 28.4 (#107)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen Plus
Kagi LLM Benchmark67.6%63.3%
LMArena Hard Prompts13511317
DTBench77.6%81.1%
LMCA26.5%24%
ARC-AGI-26.1%—
SimpleBench38.7%—
ARC-AGI-158.7%—
CritPt0.6%—
Chess Puzzles26%—
EnigmaEval9.2%—
Mystery Game Puzzles5%—
Epoch Capabilities Index145.64—
ForecastBench61.8—

Math o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 40.8 (#89), Qwen Plus: 23.3 (#271)

Math benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen Plus
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202581.7%17.8%
LMArena Math13891326
MATH Level 597.8%65.3%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)24.8%1.7%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)36.1%—
FrontierMath Tier 44.9%—
Omni-MATH72%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)6.3%—

Knowledge o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 43.6 (#91), Qwen Plus: 27.4 (#251)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen Plus
GPQA Diamond79.6%48.1%
LMArena Expert13431328
Humanity's Last Exam18.1%—
SimpleQA Verified19.6%—
MMLU-Pro82%—
Confabulations15.8%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate18.6%—
GPQA (HELM)73.5%—

Multimodal Not comparable

o4-mini: 40.2 (#49), Qwen Plus: —

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen Plus
LMArena Vision1194—
GeoBench64%—
VPCT57.5%—

Multilingual o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 47.0 (#154), Qwen Plus: 45.1 (#175)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen Plus
LMArena Non-English13371310
LMArena Chinese13541347
LMArena Japanese13081251
LMArena Russian13341323
LMArena French1364—
LMArena German1336—
LMArena Korean1312—
LMArena Spanish1347—

Instruction Following o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 75.2 (#68), Qwen Plus: 68.8 (#181)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen Plus
LMArena Instruction Following13211303
IFEval92.8%—

Long Context o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 45.5 (#33), Qwen Plus: 40.3 (#158)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen Plus
LMArena Longer Query13151324
Fiction.LiveBench77.8%—

Writing & Preference o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 54.0 (#152), Qwen Plus: 52.2 (#176)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen Plus
LMArena Text13531326
LMArena Creative Writing12941293
LMArena Multi-Turn13501336
Short-Story Creative Writing75%—
WildBench85.4%—

Frequently asked questions

Is o4-mini better than Qwen Plus?

o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 37.1 on the Noometry Index. Qwen Plus costs 3.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o4-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, o4-mini or Qwen Plus?

Qwen Plus is cheaper. It lists at $0.40 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens; o4-mini lists at $1.10 and $4.40.

Is o4-mini or Qwen Plus better for coding?

o4-mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.9 versus 38.9 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen Plus does, with 1M tokens against 200K.

How many benchmarks do o4-mini and Qwen Plus share?

20 benchmarks have published results for both models. o4-mini has 60 scored results on Noometry and Qwen Plus has 20.

Related comparisons

Go deeper