Model comparison

Phi-4 vs Qwen3.5 397B-A17B

Qwen3.5 397B-A17B is the stronger model overall, scoring 45.7 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Phi-4 costs 15× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 397B-A17B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 21 shared benchmarks.

Phi-4 Microsoft

30.9

Rank #269 Confirmed

Qwen3.5 397B-A17B Alibaba (Qwen)

45.7

Rank #60 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 21 benchmarks with published results for both. Phi-4 scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.5 397B-A17B in 9 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads 44.9 to 19.6.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 13.8% for Phi-4 and 88.9% for Qwen3.5 397B-A17B.
  • Phi-4 is cheaper at $0.07 / $0.14 per million input/output tokens, against $0.60 / $3.60 for Qwen3.5 397B-A17B.
  • Qwen3.5 397B-A17B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.

Side by side

Phi-4 and Qwen3.5 397B-A17B specifications
Phi-4Qwen3.5 397B-A17B
ProviderMicrosoftAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index30.945.7
Released2024-12-112026-02-01
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window128K262K
Max output4K66K
Input $ / M tokens$0.07$0.60
Output $ / M tokens$0.14$3.60
Results tracked3736

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Category by category

Coding Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads

Phi-4: 33.8 (#237), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 41.7 (#108)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkPhi-4Qwen3.5 397B-A17B
LMArena Coding12311464
LMArena WebDev—1400
BigCodeBench Instruct45.5%—
LiveBench Coding30.7%—
BigCodeBench Complete55.4%—

Agentic & Tool Use Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads

Phi-4: 22.6 (#120), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 33.2 (#51)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkPhi-4Qwen3.5 397B-A17B
APEX-Agents—24.9%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard28.8%—
τ²-bench Airline—81.5%
τ²-bench Banking—9.8%
τ²-bench Retail—84.4%
τ²-bench Telecom—97.8%
BALROG11.6%—

Reasoning Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads

Phi-4: 17.0 (#287), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 33.6 (#62)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkPhi-4Qwen3.5 397B-A17B
Chess Puzzles1%13%
LMArena Hard Prompts12201448
Epoch Capabilities Index130.43146.64
Kagi LLM Benchmark—73.7%
NYT Connections (extended)—58.9%
Thematic Generalization—65.1%
LiveBench Reasoning47.8%—
Mystery Game Puzzles—18%
DTBench—87.5%
LiveBench Data Analysis45.2%—
LMCA—37.9%
LiveBench41.6%—

Math Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads

Phi-4: 19.6 (#279), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 44.9 (#64)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkPhi-4Qwen3.5 397B-A17B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202513.8%88.9%
LMArena Math12461455
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)—31.2%
LiveBench Math42%—
MATH Level 564.9%—

Knowledge Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads

Phi-4: 32.5 (#204), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 53.3 (#53)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkPhi-4Qwen3.5 397B-A17B
GPQA Diamond56.1%86.4%
LMArena Expert12031461
Confabulations29.4%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate3.7%—
MMLU84.8%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Phi-4: —, Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 40.0 (#42)

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkPhi-4Qwen3.5 397B-A17B
LMArena Vision—1262

Multilingual Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads

Phi-4: 37.4 (#232), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 54.0 (#56)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkPhi-4Qwen3.5 397B-A17B
LMArena Non-English11971431
LMArena Chinese12111501
LMArena French12231461
LMArena German12221447
LMArena Japanese11581427
LMArena Korean11511382
LMArena Russian12091429
LMArena Spanish12341443

Instruction Following Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads

Phi-4: 60.6 (#246), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 75.2 (#73)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkPhi-4Qwen3.5 397B-A17B
LMArena Instruction Following12011424
LiveBench Instruction Following58.4%—

Long Context Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads

Phi-4: 36.9 (#221), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 44.1 (#71)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkPhi-4Qwen3.5 397B-A17B
LMArena Longer Query12171442

Writing & Preference Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads

Phi-4: 40.7 (#239), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 62.5 (#74)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkPhi-4Qwen3.5 397B-A17B
LMArena Text12171438
LMArena Creative Writing11821401
LMArena Multi-Turn12061447
Short-Story Creative Writing62.6%—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing—1478
LiveBench Language25.6%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Phi-4 better than Qwen3.5 397B-A17B?

Qwen3.5 397B-A17B is the stronger model overall, scoring 45.7 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Phi-4 costs 15× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 397B-A17B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Phi-4 or Qwen3.5 397B-A17B?

Phi-4 is cheaper. It lists at $0.07 per million input tokens and $0.14 per million output tokens; Qwen3.5 397B-A17B lists at $0.60 and $3.60.

Is Phi-4 or Qwen3.5 397B-A17B better for coding?

Qwen3.5 397B-A17B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.7 versus 33.8 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.5 397B-A17B does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do Phi-4 and Qwen3.5 397B-A17B share?

21 benchmarks have published results for both models. Phi-4 has 37 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 397B-A17B has 36.

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