Model comparison
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct vs Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.7 to 31.5 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 18 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Qwen2.5 72B Instruct scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct in 9 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads 34.9 to 18.1.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is WeirdML: 16% for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct and 41.2% for Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct.
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct is cheaper at $1.40 / $5.60 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct.
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 131K.
Side by side
| Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Alibaba (Qwen) | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 31.5 | 37.7 |
| Released | 2024-09 | 2025-04 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 131K | 262K |
| Max output | 8K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $1.40 | $1.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $5.60 | $7.50 |
| Results tracked | 43 | 25 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 32.8 (#256), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 36.2 (#199)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| WeirdML | 16% | 41.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1293 | 1413 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 55.4% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1275 |
| GSO | — | 4.9% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 45.8% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 55.9% | — |
| ALE-Bench | — | 461.45 |
| AlgoTune | — | 1.44 |
Agentic & Tool Use Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.0 (#124), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 23.7 (#116)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 27.2% |
| TheAgentCompany | 5.7% | — |
| BALROG | 16.2% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 35.8% | — |
Reasoning Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 21.4 (#197), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 24.7 (#141)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1271 | 1372 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 49.5% |
| DTBench | 62.9% | — |
| LMCA | 13.4% | — |
| BIG-Bench Hard | 79.8% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 129.01 | — |
| ForecastBench | 57.5 | — |
| HellaSwag | 84.8% | — |
| PIQA | 82.6% | — |
| WinoGrande | 82.3% | — |
Math Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 18.1 (#281), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 34.9 (#151)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1283 | 1364 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 8.1% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 33% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 63.2% | — |
Knowledge Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 26.9 (#247), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 36.4 (#159)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1245 | 1337 |
| GPQA Diamond | 49.1% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 63.1% | — |
| Confabulations | 19.1% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 42.6% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | 94.5% | — |
| MMLU | 85.3% | — |
| TriviaQA | 71.9% | — |
Multilingual Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 41.2 (#208), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 47.8 (#143)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1252 | 1345 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1272 | 1356 |
| LMArena French | 1279 | 1394 |
| LMArena German | 1234 | 1324 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1180 | 1309 |
| LMArena Korean | 1188 | 1307 |
| LMArena Russian | 1264 | 1367 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1255 | 1360 |
Instruction Following Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 65.7 (#216), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 71.8 (#142)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1254 | 1356 |
| IFEval | 80.6% | — |
Long Context Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 38.9 (#183), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 42.0 (#126)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1282 | 1379 |
Writing & Preference Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 46.9 (#210), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 55.5 (#142)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1269 | 1356 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1221 | 1333 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1272 | 1365 |
| WildBench | 80.2% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Qwen2.5 72B Instruct better than Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?
Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.7 to 31.5 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct is cheaper. It lists at $1.40 per million input tokens and $5.60 per million output tokens; Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct lists at $1.50 and $7.50.
Is Qwen2.5 72B Instruct or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct better for coding?
Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.2 versus 32.8 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct does, with 262K tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do Qwen2.5 72B Instruct and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct share?
18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has 43 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has 25.