Model comparison

o4-mini vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct

o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 31.9 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 32 shared benchmarks.

o4-mini OpenAI

41.6

Rank #132 Confirmed

Qwen2.5 72B Instruct Alibaba (Qwen)

31.9

Rank #267 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 32 benchmarks with published results for both. o4-mini scores higher in 9 categories and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where o4-mini leads 40.8 to 19.3.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 81.7% for o4-mini and 8.1% for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct.
  • o4-mini is cheaper at $1.10 / $4.40 per million input/output tokens, against $1.40 / $5.60 for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct.
  • o4-mini accepts more context: 200K tokens versus 131K.
  • Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

o4-mini and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct specifications
o4-miniQwen2.5 72B Instruct
ProviderOpenAIAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index41.631.9
Released2025-04-162024-09
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window200K131K
Max output100K8K
Input $ / M tokens$1.10$1.40
Output $ / M tokens$4.40$5.60
Results tracked6043

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Category by category

Coding o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 40.9 (#127), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 33.2 (#260)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen2.5 72B Instruct
WeirdML52.6%16%
LMArena Coding13681292
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)45%—
Aider Polyglot72%—
GSO3.6%—
BigCodeBench Instruct—45.8%
BigCodeBench Complete—55.9%
CadEval62%—
ALE-Bench826.17—
AlgoTune1.72—

Agentic & Tool Use o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 32.6 (#61), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.1 (#133)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen2.5 72B Instruct
METR Time Horizons63.9%35.8%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard53.2%—
GDPval25.3%—
TheAgentCompany—5.7%
BALROG—16.2%

Reasoning o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 24.6 (#162), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.3 (#199)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen2.5 72B Instruct
LMArena Hard Prompts13511271
DTBench77.6%62.9%
LMCA26.5%13.4%
Epoch Capabilities Index145.64129
ForecastBench61.857.5
ARC-AGI-26.1%—
SimpleBench38.7%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark67.6%—
ARC-AGI-158.7%—
CritPt0.6%—
Chess Puzzles26%—
EnigmaEval9.2%—
Mystery Game Puzzles5%—
BIG-Bench Hard—79.8%
HellaSwag—84.8%
PIQA—82.6%
WinoGrande—82.3%

Math o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 40.8 (#89), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 19.3 (#287)

Math benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen2.5 72B Instruct
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202581.7%8.1%
Omni-MATH72%33%
LMArena Math13891283
MATH Level 597.8%63.2%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)36.1%—
FrontierMath Tier 44.9%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)24.8%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)6.3%—

Knowledge o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 43.6 (#91), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 27.0 (#253)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen2.5 72B Instruct
GPQA Diamond79.6%49.1%
MMLU-Pro82%63.1%
Confabulations15.8%19.1%
GPQA (HELM)73.5%42.6%
LMArena Expert13431245
Humanity's Last Exam18.1%—
SimpleQA Verified19.6%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate18.6%—
ARC (AI2) Challenge—94.5%
MMLU—85.3%
TriviaQA—71.9%

Multimodal Not comparable

o4-mini: 40.2 (#49), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: —

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen2.5 72B Instruct
LMArena Vision1194—
GeoBench64%—
VPCT57.5%—

Multilingual o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 47.0 (#154), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 41.0 (#213)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen2.5 72B Instruct
LMArena Non-English13371252
LMArena Chinese13541272
LMArena French13641280
LMArena German13361234
LMArena Japanese13081180
LMArena Korean13121188
LMArena Russian13341264
LMArena Spanish13471256

Instruction Following o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 75.2 (#68), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 65.5 (#221)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen2.5 72B Instruct
IFEval92.8%80.6%
LMArena Instruction Following13211254

Long Context o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 45.5 (#33), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 38.9 (#188)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen2.5 72B Instruct
LMArena Longer Query13151282
Fiction.LiveBench77.8%—

Writing & Preference o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 54.0 (#152), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 46.7 (#215)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen2.5 72B Instruct
LMArena Text13531269
LMArena Creative Writing12941221
WildBench85.4%80.2%
LMArena Multi-Turn13501272
Short-Story Creative Writing75%—

Frequently asked questions

Is o4-mini better than Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?

o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 31.9 on the Noometry Index.

Which is cheaper, o4-mini or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?

o4-mini is cheaper. It lists at $1.10 per million input tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens; Qwen2.5 72B Instruct lists at $1.40 and $5.60.

Is o4-mini or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct better for coding?

o4-mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.9 versus 33.2 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 72B Instruct share?

32 benchmarks have published results for both models. o4-mini has 60 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has 43.

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