Model comparison
Qwen2.5-Max vs Qwen3 8B
Qwen2.5-Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.1 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 1 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 1 benchmark with published results for both. Qwen2.5-Max scores higher in 4 categories and Qwen3 8B in 1 category; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen2.5-Max leads 24.6 to 16.1.
- Qwen3 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Qwen2.5-Max | Qwen3 8B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Alibaba (Qwen) | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 40.1 | 33.3 |
| Released | 2025-01-25 | 2025-04 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | — | 131K |
| Max output | — | 8K |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | $0.18 |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | $0.70 |
| Results tracked | 27 | 11 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen2.5-Max leads
Qwen2.5-Max: 41.2 (#118), Qwen3 8B: 33.4 (#245)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5-Max | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | — | 22.6% |
| LiveBench Coding | 64.4% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1359 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Qwen2.5-Max: —, Qwen3 8B: 29.9 (#71)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5-Max | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 42.6% |
Reasoning Qwen2.5-Max leads
Qwen2.5-Max: 24.6 (#144), Qwen3 8B: 16.1 (#299)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5-Max | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 132.54 | 136.17 |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 5% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 51.4% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1360 | — |
| DTBench | — | 59.7% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 67.9% | — |
| LMCA | — | 8.8% |
| LiveBench | 62.3% | — |
Math Qwen2.5-Max leads
Qwen2.5-Max: 34.3 (#162), Qwen3 8B: 33.3 (#176)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5-Max | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 56.1% |
| LiveBench Math | 58.4% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1369 | — |
Knowledge Qwen3 8B leads
Qwen2.5-Max: 34.8 (#181), Qwen3 8B: 36.1 (#164)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5-Max | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 56.8% |
| Confabulations | 21.8% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 4.8% |
| LMArena Expert | 1337 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Qwen2.5-Max: 48.3 (#140), Qwen3 8B: —
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5-Max | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1352 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1382 | — |
| LMArena French | 1396 | — |
| LMArena German | 1350 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1299 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1304 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1353 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1377 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Qwen2.5-Max: 71.5 (#147), Qwen3 8B: —
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5-Max | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 75.3% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1335 | — |
Long Context Qwen2.5-Max leads
Qwen2.5-Max: 41.3 (#137), Qwen3 8B: 37.8 (#205)
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5-Max | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 62.1% |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1358 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Qwen2.5-Max: 55.6 (#141), Qwen3 8B: —
| Benchmark | Qwen2.5-Max | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1367 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1339 | — |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 72.9% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1364 | — |
| LiveBench Language | 56.3% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Qwen2.5-Max better than Qwen3 8B?
Qwen2.5-Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.1 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index.
Is Qwen2.5-Max or Qwen3 8B better for coding?
Qwen2.5-Max scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.2 versus 33.4 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Qwen2.5-Max and Qwen3 8B share?
1 benchmark has published results for both models. Qwen2.5-Max has 27 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 8B has 11.