Model comparison
Qwen2.5 32B Instruct vs Qwen3-30B-A3B
Qwen3-30B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.9 to 30.1 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 4 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Qwen2.5 32B Instruct scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3-30B-A3B in 3 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3-30B-A3B leads 37.4 to 16.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 7.4% for Qwen2.5 32B Instruct and 70.3% for Qwen3-30B-A3B.
- Qwen3-30B-A3B is cheaper at $0.12 / $0.50 per million input/output tokens, against $0.70 / $2.80 for Qwen2.5 32B Instruct.
- Qwen2.5 32B Instruct accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 41K.
Side by side
| Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Alibaba (Qwen) | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 30.1 | 38.9 |
| Released | 2024-09 | 2025-04-28 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 131K | 41K |
| Max output | 8K | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.70 | $0.12 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $2.80 | $0.50 |
| Results tracked | 7 | 32 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen2.5 32B Instruct leads
Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: 38.7 (#169), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.5 (#194)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | — | 33.3% |
| WeirdML | — | 29.8% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 45% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1416 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 52.3% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: —, Qwen3-30B-A3B: 29.8 (#82)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 41.4% |
Reasoning Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: 19.2 (#266), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 22.2 (#204)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | 8% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 128.52 | 139.63 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 54.9% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1398 |
| DTBench | — | 69.3% |
| LMCA | — | 22.4% |
Math Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: 16.2 (#296), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.4 (#157)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 7.4% | 70.3% |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 47.8% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1394 |
| MATH Level 5 | 56.1% | — |
Knowledge Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: 24.9 (#266), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 41.8 (#105)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 46.1% | 70.1% |
| Confabulations | — | 12.3% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1396 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: —, Qwen3-30B-A3B: 49.5 (#132)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1372 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1433 |
| LMArena French | — | 1418 |
| LMArena German | — | 1380 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1337 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1331 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1370 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1404 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: —, Qwen3-30B-A3B: 72.0 (#142)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1363 |
Long Context Not comparable
Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: —, Qwen3-30B-A3B: 31.0 (#283)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 40.6% |
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1379 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: —, Qwen3-30B-A3B: 55.6 (#143)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1384 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1317 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 75.3% |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1378 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Qwen2.5 32B Instruct better than Qwen3-30B-A3B?
Qwen3-30B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.9 to 30.1 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Qwen2.5 32B Instruct or Qwen3-30B-A3B?
Qwen3-30B-A3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.12 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens; Qwen2.5 32B Instruct lists at $0.70 and $2.80.
Is Qwen2.5 32B Instruct or Qwen3-30B-A3B better for coding?
Qwen2.5 32B Instruct scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.7 versus 37.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen2.5 32B Instruct does, with 131K tokens against 41K.
How many benchmarks do Qwen2.5 32B Instruct and Qwen3-30B-A3B share?
4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Qwen2.5 32B Instruct has 7 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-30B-A3B has 32.