# GPT-4o mini vs Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct

> Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.7 to 25.4 on the Noometry Index. GPT-4o mini costs 11× 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-4o-mini-vs-qwen3-coder-480b-a35b-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 19

## Summary

- They share 19 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-4o mini scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct in 8 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads 34.9 to 9.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is WeirdML: 11.8% for GPT-4o mini and 41.2% for Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct.
- GPT-4o mini is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 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 128K.
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | GPT-4o mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 25.4 | 37.7 |
| Rank | 337 | 186 |
| Context | 128K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.15 | $1.50 |
| Output $/M | $0.60 | $7.50 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- GPT-4o mini: 21.6 (#330)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 36.2 (#199)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| WeirdML | 11.8% | 41.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1290 | 1413 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 55.4% |
| Aider Polyglot | 3.6% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1275 |
| GSO | — | 4.9% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 46.1% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 43.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 57.4% | — |
| ALE-Bench | — | 461.45 |
| AlgoTune | — | 1.44 |
| HumanEval+ | 83.5% | — |
| MBPP+ | 72.2% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- GPT-4o mini: 27.2 (#95)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 23.7 (#116)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 27.2% |
| BALROG | 17.4% | — |

## Reasoning

- GPT-4o mini: 8.7 (#343)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 24.7 (#141)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 28.8% | 49.5% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1267 | 1372 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| SimpleBench | 10.7% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 32.8% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 12% | — |
| DTBench | 54.4% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 50% | — |
| LMCA | 10.4% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 126.56 | — |
| LiveBench | 41.3% | — |
| PIQA | 88.7% | — |

## Math

- GPT-4o mini: 9.9 (#307)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 34.9 (#151)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1267 | 1364 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 0.7% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 6.9% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 28% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 36.3% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 52.6% | — |
| GSM8K | 91.3% | — |

## Knowledge

- GPT-4o mini: 17.7 (#279)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 36.4 (#159)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1235 | 1337 |
| GPQA Diamond | 37.7% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 8.3% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 60.3% | — |
| Confabulations | 37.2% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 36.8% | — |
| BoolQ | 88.7% | — |
| MMLU | 81.8% | — |

## Multimodal

- GPT-4o mini: 25.3 (#117)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: —

| Benchmark | GPT-4o mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1066 | — |
| Video-MME | 64.8% | — |
| GeoBench | 64% | — |
| VPCT | 34% | — |

## Multilingual

- GPT-4o mini: 42.2 (#194)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 47.8 (#143)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1266 | 1345 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1264 | 1356 |
| LMArena French | 1296 | 1394 |
| LMArena German | 1272 | 1324 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1216 | 1309 |
| LMArena Korean | 1195 | 1307 |
| LMArena Russian | 1275 | 1367 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1276 | 1360 |

## Instruction Following

- GPT-4o mini: 62.1 (#234)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 71.8 (#142)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1259 | 1356 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 56.8% | — |
| IFEval | 78.2% | — |

## Long Context

- GPT-4o mini: 39.1 (#181)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 42.0 (#126)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1289 | 1379 |

## Writing & Preference

- GPT-4o mini: 39.7 (#243)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 55.5 (#142)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1286 | 1356 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1268 | 1333 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1285 | 1365 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 67.2% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 873 | — |
| WildBench | 79.1% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 28.6% | — |

## FAQ

### Is GPT-4o mini better than Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?

Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.7 to 25.4 on the Noometry Index. GPT-4o mini costs 11× 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-4o mini or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?

GPT-4o mini is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct lists at $1.50 and $7.50.

### Is GPT-4o mini or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct better for coding?

Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.2 versus 21.6 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do GPT-4o mini and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct share?

19 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-4o mini has 60 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has 25.