Model comparison

o4-mini vs Qwen2.5 32B Instruct

o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 30.1 on the Noometry Index. Qwen2.5 32B Instruct costs 1.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o4-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 5 shared benchmarks.

o4-mini OpenAI

41.6

Rank #132 Confirmed

Qwen2.5 32B Instruct Alibaba (Qwen)

30.1

Rank #297 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 5 benchmarks with published results for both. o4-mini scores higher in 4 categories and Qwen2.5 32B Instruct in 0 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where o4-mini leads 40.8 to 16.2.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 81.7% for o4-mini and 7.4% for Qwen2.5 32B Instruct.
  • Qwen2.5 32B Instruct is cheaper at $0.70 / $2.80 per million input/output tokens, against $1.10 / $4.40 for o4-mini.
  • o4-mini accepts more context: 200K tokens versus 131K.
  • Qwen2.5 32B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

o4-mini and Qwen2.5 32B Instruct specifications
o4-miniQwen2.5 32B Instruct
ProviderOpenAIAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index41.630.1
Released2025-04-162024-09
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window200K131K
Max output100K8K
Input $ / M tokens$1.10$0.70
Output $ / M tokens$4.40$2.80
Results tracked607

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Category by category

Coding o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 40.9 (#127), Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: 38.7 (#169)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen2.5 32B Instruct
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)45%—
Aider Polyglot72%—
GSO3.6%—
WeirdML52.6%—
BigCodeBench Instruct—45%
LMArena Coding1368—
BigCodeBench Complete—52.3%
CadEval62%—
ALE-Bench826.17—
AlgoTune1.72—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

o4-mini: 32.6 (#61), Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen2.5 32B Instruct
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard53.2%—
GDPval25.3%—
METR Time Horizons63.9%—

Reasoning o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 24.6 (#162), Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: 19.2 (#266)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen2.5 32B Instruct
Chess Puzzles26%0%
Epoch Capabilities Index145.64128.52
ARC-AGI-26.1%—
SimpleBench38.7%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark67.6%—
ARC-AGI-158.7%—
CritPt0.6%—
EnigmaEval9.2%—
LMArena Hard Prompts1351—
Mystery Game Puzzles5%—
DTBench77.6%—
LMCA26.5%—
ForecastBench61.8—

Math o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 40.8 (#89), Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: 16.2 (#296)

Math benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen2.5 32B Instruct
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202581.7%7.4%
MATH Level 597.8%56.1%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)36.1%—
FrontierMath Tier 44.9%—
Omni-MATH72%—
LMArena Math1389—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)24.8%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)6.3%—

Knowledge o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 43.6 (#91), Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: 24.9 (#266)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen2.5 32B Instruct
GPQA Diamond79.6%46.1%
Humanity's Last Exam18.1%—
SimpleQA Verified19.6%—
MMLU-Pro82%—
Confabulations15.8%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate18.6%—
GPQA (HELM)73.5%—
LMArena Expert1343—

Multimodal Not comparable

o4-mini: 40.2 (#49), Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: —

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen2.5 32B Instruct
LMArena Vision1194—
GeoBench64%—
VPCT57.5%—

Multilingual Not comparable

o4-mini: 47.0 (#154), Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: —

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen2.5 32B Instruct
LMArena Non-English1337—
LMArena Chinese1354—
LMArena French1364—
LMArena German1336—
LMArena Japanese1308—
LMArena Korean1312—
LMArena Russian1334—
LMArena Spanish1347—

Instruction Following Not comparable

o4-mini: 75.2 (#68), Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen2.5 32B Instruct
IFEval92.8%—
LMArena Instruction Following1321—

Long Context Not comparable

o4-mini: 45.5 (#33), Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: —

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen2.5 32B Instruct
Fiction.LiveBench77.8%—
LMArena Longer Query1315—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

o4-mini: 54.0 (#152), Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: —

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen2.5 32B Instruct
LMArena Text1353—
LMArena Creative Writing1294—
Short-Story Creative Writing75%—
WildBench85.4%—
LMArena Multi-Turn1350—

Frequently asked questions

Is o4-mini better than Qwen2.5 32B Instruct?

o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 30.1 on the Noometry Index. Qwen2.5 32B Instruct costs 1.6× 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 Qwen2.5 32B Instruct?

Qwen2.5 32B Instruct is cheaper. It lists at $0.70 per million input tokens and $2.80 per million output tokens; o4-mini lists at $1.10 and $4.40.

Is o4-mini or Qwen2.5 32B Instruct better for coding?

o4-mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.9 versus 38.7 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

o4-mini does, with 200K tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do o4-mini and Qwen2.5 32B Instruct share?

5 benchmarks have published results for both models. o4-mini has 60 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2.5 32B Instruct has 7.

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