# GPT-3.5-turbo vs Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct

> Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 29.7 to 23.2 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gpt-3-5-turbo-vs-phi-3-mini-128k-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 19

## Summary

- They share 19 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-3.5-turbo scores higher in 3 categories and Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct in 5 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct leads 31.6 to 6.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is BigCodeBench Complete: 50.6% for GPT-3.5-turbo and 40.6% for Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct.
- Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | GPT-3.5-turbo | Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 23.2 | 29.7 |
| Rank | 350 | 305 |
| Context | 16K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.50 | — |
| Output $/M | $1.50 | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 23.9 (#331)
- Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct: 28.8 (#312)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 39.1% | 29.6% |
| LMArena Coding | 1136 | 1039 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 50.6% | 40.6% |
| WeirdML | 3.5% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 70.7% | — |
| MBPP+ | 69.7% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- GPT-3.5-turbo: —
- Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct: —

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| METR Time Horizons | 21.5% | — |

## Reasoning

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 13.8 (#332)
- Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct: 19.6 (#256)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1108 | 1028 |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 3% | — |
| DTBench | 48.5% | — |
| LMCA | 9.7% | — |
| Adversarial NLI | 58.1% | — |
| BIG-Bench Hard | 61.6% | — |
| CommonsenseQA 2.0 | 57% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 118.55 | — |
| ForecastBench | 50.4 | — |
| WinoGrande | 81.6% | — |

## Math

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 6.3 (#327)
- Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct: 31.6 (#222)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1142 | 1089 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 0% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 2.2% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 15.9% | — |
| GSM8K | 57.8% | — |

## Knowledge

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 10.0 (#303)
- Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct: 26.8 (#254)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1070 | 984 |
| GPQA Diamond | 28% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | 87.4% | — |
| BoolQ | 87% | — |
| MMLU | 71.4% | — |
| OpenBookQA | 86% | — |
| TriviaQA | 85.8% | — |

## Multilingual

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 31.5 (#258)
- Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct: 25.2 (#285)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1108 | 1000 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1075 | 1016 |
| LMArena French | 1118 | 1039 |
| LMArena German | 1090 | 1006 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1043 | 899 |
| LMArena Korean | 1019 | 856 |
| LMArena Russian | 1123 | 1004 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1121 | 1059 |

## Instruction Following

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 57.9 (#262)
- Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct: 51.8 (#294)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1119 | 1023 |

## Long Context

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 34.0 (#254)
- Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct: 30.4 (#289)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1121 | 996 |

## Writing & Preference

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 25.3 (#305)
- Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct: 27.1 (#301)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1125 | 1050 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1092 | 1024 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1117 | 989 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 451 | — |

## FAQ

### Is GPT-3.5-turbo better than Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct?

Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 29.7 to 23.2 on the Noometry Index.

### Is GPT-3.5-turbo or Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct better for coding?

Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct scores higher on coding benchmarks: 28.8 versus 23.9 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do GPT-3.5-turbo and Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct share?

19 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-3.5-turbo has 44 scored results on Noometry and Phi 3 Mini 128k Instruct has 19.