Model comparison

o4-mini vs Qwen3 32B

o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 39.2 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 32B 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 . 25 shared benchmarks.

o4-mini OpenAI

41.6

Rank #132 Confirmed

Qwen3 32B Alibaba (Qwen)

39.2

Rank #172 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 25 benchmarks with published results for both. o4-mini scores higher in 8 categories and Qwen3 32B in 1 category; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in instruction following, where o4-mini leads 75.2 to 68.9.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Aider Polyglot: 72% for o4-mini and 40% for Qwen3 32B.
  • Qwen3 32B 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.
  • Qwen3 32B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

o4-mini and Qwen3 32B specifications
o4-miniQwen3 32B
ProviderOpenAIAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index41.639.2
Released2025-04-162025-04
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window200K131K
Max output100K16K
Input $ / M tokens$1.10$0.70
Output $ / M tokens$4.40$2.80
Results tracked6026

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Category by category

Coding o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 40.9 (#127), Qwen3 32B: 37.7 (#190)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3 32B
Aider Polyglot72%40%
LMArena Coding13681358
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)45%—
SciCode—35.4%
GSO3.6%—
WeirdML52.6%—
CadEval62%—
ALE-Bench826.17—
AlgoTune1.72—

Agentic & Tool Use Too close to call

o4-mini: 32.6 (#61), Qwen3 32B: 32.6 (#62)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3 32B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard53.2%48.7%
GDPval25.3%—
METR Time Horizons63.9%—

Reasoning o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 24.6 (#162), Qwen3 32B: 20.2 (#241)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3 32B
Kagi LLM Benchmark67.6%54.9%
CritPt0.6%0.3%
Chess Puzzles26%5%
LMArena Hard Prompts13511334
DTBench77.6%67.5%
LMCA26.5%17.3%
Epoch Capabilities Index145.64138.51
ARC-AGI-26.1%—
SimpleBench38.7%—
ARC-AGI-158.7%—
EnigmaEval9.2%—
Mystery Game Puzzles5%—
ForecastBench61.8—

Math o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 40.8 (#89), Qwen3 32B: 39.7 (#99)

Math benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3 32B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202581.7%66.9%
LMArena Math13891399
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)36.1%—
FrontierMath Tier 44.9%—
Omni-MATH72%—
MATH Level 597.8%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)24.8%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)6.3%—

Knowledge o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 43.6 (#91), Qwen3 32B: 40.0 (#125)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3 32B
GPQA Diamond79.6%65.7%
Vectara Hallucination Rate18.6%5.9%
LMArena Expert13431362
Humanity's Last Exam18.1%—
SimpleQA Verified19.6%—
MMLU-Pro82%—
Confabulations15.8%—
GPQA (HELM)73.5%—

Multimodal Not comparable

o4-mini: 40.2 (#49), Qwen3 32B: —

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3 32B
LMArena Vision1194—
GeoBench64%—
VPCT57.5%—

Multilingual o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 47.0 (#154), Qwen3 32B: 45.6 (#167)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3 32B
LMArena Non-English13371317
LMArena Chinese13541357
LMArena German13361341
LMArena Russian13341311
LMArena French1364—
LMArena Japanese1308—
LMArena Korean1312—
LMArena Spanish1347—

Instruction Following o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 75.2 (#68), Qwen3 32B: 68.9 (#179)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3 32B
LMArena Instruction Following13211305
IFEval92.8%—

Long Context o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 45.5 (#33), Qwen3 32B: 43.8 (#87)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3 32B
Fiction.LiveBench77.8%74.2%
LMArena Longer Query13151327

Writing & Preference o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 54.0 (#152), Qwen3 32B: 52.9 (#163)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3 32B
LMArena Text13531340
LMArena Creative Writing12941297
LMArena Multi-Turn13501331
Short-Story Creative Writing75%—
WildBench85.4%—

Frequently asked questions

Is o4-mini better than Qwen3 32B?

o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 39.2 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 32B 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 Qwen3 32B?

Qwen3 32B 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 Qwen3 32B better for coding?

o4-mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.9 versus 37.7 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 Qwen3 32B share?

25 benchmarks have published results for both models. o4-mini has 60 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 32B has 26.

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