Model comparison

Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct vs Qwen3 235B-A22B

Qwen3 235B-A22B is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.5 to 29.3 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.

Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct Microsoft

29.3

Rank #314 Confirmed

Qwen3 235B-A22B Alibaba (Qwen)

43.5

Rank #91 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3 235B-A22B in 8 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen3 235B-A22B leads 59.6 to 31.1.

Side by side

Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct and Qwen3 235B-A22B specifications
Phi 3 Small 8k InstructQwen3 235B-A22B
ProviderMicrosoftAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index29.343.5
Released2024-04-232025-04
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window—131K
Max output—16K
Input $ / M tokens—$0.70
Output $ / M tokens—$2.80
Results tracked3249

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

Category by category

Coding Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 27.9 (#318), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 44.3 (#75)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkPhi 3 Small 8k InstructQwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Coding11011445
Aider Polyglot—59.6%
SciCode—42.4%
WeirdML—41%
LiveBench Coding20.3%—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: —, Qwen3 235B-A22B: 33.9 (#51)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkPhi 3 Small 8k InstructQwen3 235B-A22B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—52.1%
Vending-Bench 2—-11.34

Reasoning Too close to call

Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 14.8 (#323), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 15.7 (#311)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkPhi 3 Small 8k InstructQwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Hard Prompts11001433
ARC-AGI-2—1.3%
SimpleBench—31%
Kagi LLM Benchmark—69.4%
ARC-AGI-1—11%
CritPt—0%
Chess Puzzles—12%
LiveBench Reasoning15.9%—
Mystery Game Puzzles—9%
DTBench—80.3%
LiveBench Data Analysis30.3%—
LMCA—29.3%
Adversarial NLI58.1%—
BIG-Bench Hard79.1%—
Epoch Capabilities Index—143.85
ForecastBench—59.7
HellaSwag77%—
LiveBench24%—
WinoGrande81.5%—

Math Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 27.6 (#248), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 50.4 (#57)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkPhi 3 Small 8k InstructQwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Math11511432
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025—86.7%
Omni-MATH—71.8%
LiveBench Math17.6%—
MATH Level 5—68.9%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)—8.5%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)—0%

Knowledge Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 29.1 (#240), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 49.6 (#73)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkPhi 3 Small 8k InstructQwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Expert10671463
GPQA Diamond—80.1%
SimpleQA Verified—40.4%
MMLU-Pro—84.4%
Confabulations—15.6%
Vectara Hallucination Rate—9.3%
GPQA (HELM)—72.7%
ARC (AI2) Challenge90.7%—
MMLU75.7%—
OpenBookQA88%—
TriviaQA58.1%—

Multilingual Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 28.5 (#272), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 52.3 (#89)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkPhi 3 Small 8k InstructQwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Non-English10581409
LMArena Chinese10611481
LMArena French11351445
LMArena German10801433
LMArena Japanese9661399
LMArena Korean8941391
LMArena Russian11111411
LMArena Spanish11111430

Instruction Following Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 51.9 (#292), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 72.6 (#136)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkPhi 3 Small 8k InstructQwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Instruction Following10871408
LiveBench Instruction Following47.2%—
IFEval—83.5%

Long Context Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 33.0 (#267), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 46.1 (#26)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkPhi 3 Small 8k InstructQwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Longer Query10881426
Fiction.LiveBench—75%

Writing & Preference Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 31.1 (#284), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 59.6 (#108)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkPhi 3 Small 8k InstructQwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Text11101419
LMArena Creative Writing10831384
LMArena Multi-Turn10681432
Short-Story Creative Writing—83%
EQ-Bench Creative Writing—1366
WildBench—86.6%
LiveBench Language12.9%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct better than Qwen3 235B-A22B?

Qwen3 235B-A22B is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.5 to 29.3 on the Noometry Index.

Is Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct or Qwen3 235B-A22B better for coding?

Qwen3 235B-A22B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 44.3 versus 27.9 in the Noometry coding category.

How many benchmarks do Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct and Qwen3 235B-A22B share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct has 32 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 235B-A22B has 49.

Related comparisons

Go deeper