# GPT-5 Nano vs Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct

> GPT-5 Nano is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.4 to 28.8 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gpt-5-nano-vs-phi-3-small-8k-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 15

## Summary

- They share 15 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-5 Nano scores higher in 7 categories and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct in 1 category; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in instruction following, where GPT-5 Nano leads 75.2 to 52.2.
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 33.4 | 28.8 |
| Rank | 234 | 310 |
| Context | 400K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.05 | — |
| Output $/M | $0.40 | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- GPT-5 Nano: 33.3 (#248)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 27.4 (#313)

| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1351 | 1102 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 34.8% | — |
| WeirdML | 38.1% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 20.3% |
| ALE-Bench | 718.67 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- GPT-5 Nano: 25.6 (#99)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: —

| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 21.8% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 51.5% | — |

## Reasoning

- GPT-5 Nano: 16.4 (#291)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 14.2 (#319)

| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1329 | 1100 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 2.6% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 62.2% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 20.7% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 27% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 15.9% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 9% | — |
| DTBench | 62.7% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 30.3% |
| LMCA | 7.9% | — |
| Adversarial NLI | — | 58.1% |
| BIG-Bench Hard | — | 79.1% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 139.39 | — |
| ForecastBench | 59.1 | — |
| HellaSwag | — | 77% |
| LiveBench | — | 24% |
| WinoGrande | — | 81.5% |

## Math

- GPT-5 Nano: 29.1 (#221)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 25.4 (#247)

| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1318 | 1151 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 20% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 2.4% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 81.1% | — |
| ProofBench | 12% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 54.6% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 17.6% |
| MATH Level 5 | 95.2% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 8.3% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 2.1% | — |

## Knowledge

- GPT-5 Nano: 35.8 (#166)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 28.5 (#237)

| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1321 | 1067 |
| GPQA Diamond | 69.4% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 11.7% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 77.8% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.5% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 67.9% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 90.7% |
| MMLU | — | 75.7% |
| OpenBookQA | — | 88% |
| TriviaQA | — | 58.1% |

## Multimodal

- GPT-5 Nano: 30.7 (#102)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: —

| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1159 | — |
| VPCT | 37.2% | — |

## Multilingual

- GPT-5 Nano: 45.5 (#167)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 28.6 (#267)

| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1313 | 1058 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1355 | 1061 |
| LMArena German | 1329 | 1080 |
| LMArena Korean | 1269 | 894 |
| LMArena Russian | 1296 | 1111 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1360 | 1111 |
| LMArena French | — | 1134 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 966 |

## Instruction Following

- GPT-5 Nano: 75.2 (#72)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 52.2 (#287)

| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1306 | 1087 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 47.2% |
| IFEval | 93.2% | — |

## Long Context

- GPT-5 Nano: 31.3 (#275)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 33.0 (#262)

| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1313 | 1088 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 44.4% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- GPT-5 Nano: 39.4 (#244)
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 31.3 (#279)

| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1320 | 1110 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1250 | 1083 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1311 | 1068 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 705 | — |
| WildBench | 80.6% | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 12.9% |

## FAQ

### Is GPT-5 Nano better than Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct?

GPT-5 Nano is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.4 to 28.8 on the Noometry Index.

### Is GPT-5 Nano or Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct better for coding?

GPT-5 Nano scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.3 versus 27.4 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do GPT-5 Nano and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct share?

15 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-5 Nano has 48 scored results on Noometry and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct has 32.