# GPT-4.1 mini vs Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct

> Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.7 to 33.5 on the Noometry Index. GPT-4.1 mini costs 4.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gpt-4-1-mini-vs-qwen3-coder-480b-a35b-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 20

## Summary

- They share 20 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-4.1 mini scores higher in 2 categories and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct in 7 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads 24.7 to 10.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is SWE-bench Verified (bash only): 23.9% for GPT-4.1 mini and 55.4% for Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct.
- GPT-4.1 mini is cheaper at $0.40 / $1.60 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct.
- GPT-4.1 mini accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 262K.
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 33.5 | 37.7 |
| Rank | 232 | 186 |
| Context | 1.05M | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.40 | $1.50 |
| Output $/M | $1.60 | $7.50 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- GPT-4.1 mini: 30.4 (#286)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 36.2 (#199)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 23.9% | 55.4% |
| WeirdML | 37.6% | 41.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1367 | 1413 |
| Aider Polyglot | 32.4% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1275 |
| SciCode | 40.4% | — |
| GSO | — | 4.9% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 48.9% | — |
| CadEval | 16% | — |
| ALE-Bench | — | 461.45 |
| AlgoTune | — | 1.44 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- GPT-4.1 mini: 33.0 (#52)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 23.7 (#116)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 27.2% |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 50.5% | — |

## Reasoning

- GPT-4.1 mini: 10.9 (#335)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 24.7 (#141)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 48.6% | 49.5% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1349 | 1372 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 3.5% | — |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 7% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 7% | — |
| DTBench | 68.8% | — |
| LMCA | 21.1% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 135.01 | — |

## Math

- GPT-4.1 mini: 23.1 (#264)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 34.9 (#151)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1343 | 1364 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 6.7% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 44.7% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 49.1% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 87.3% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 4.5% | — |

## Knowledge

- GPT-4.1 mini: 34.7 (#183)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 36.4 (#159)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1338 | 1337 |
| GPQA Diamond | 65.8% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 12.7% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 78.3% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 61.4% | — |

## Multimodal

- GPT-4.1 mini: 35.2 (#77)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: —

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1181 | — |

## Multilingual

- GPT-4.1 mini: 45.9 (#161)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 47.8 (#143)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1318 | 1345 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1329 | 1356 |
| LMArena French | 1357 | 1394 |
| LMArena German | 1349 | 1324 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1291 | 1309 |
| LMArena Korean | 1298 | 1307 |
| LMArena Russian | 1324 | 1367 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1319 | 1360 |

## Instruction Following

- GPT-4.1 mini: 73.9 (#113)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 71.8 (#142)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1332 | 1356 |
| IFEval | 90.4% | — |

## Long Context

- GPT-4.1 mini: 31.8 (#270)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 42.0 (#126)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1344 | 1379 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 44.4% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- GPT-4.1 mini: 48.8 (#193)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 55.5 (#142)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1341 | 1356 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1300 | 1333 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1354 | 1365 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1147 | — |
| WildBench | 83.8% | — |

## FAQ

### Is GPT-4.1 mini better than Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?

Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.7 to 33.5 on the Noometry Index. GPT-4.1 mini costs 4.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, GPT-4.1 mini or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?

GPT-4.1 mini is cheaper. It lists at $0.40 per million input tokens and $1.60 per million output tokens; Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct lists at $1.50 and $7.50.

### Is GPT-4.1 mini or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct better for coding?

Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.2 versus 30.4 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

GPT-4.1 mini does, with 1.05M tokens against 262K.

### How many benchmarks do GPT-4.1 mini and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct share?

20 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-4.1 mini has 47 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has 25.