# o3-mini vs Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct

> Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.1 to 36.7 on the Noometry Index. o3-mini costs 1.6× 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/o3-mini-vs-qwen3-coder-480b-a35b-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 19

## Summary

- They share 19 benchmarks with published results for both. o3-mini scores higher in 4 categories and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct in 5 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads 37.6 to 28.1.
- o3-mini is cheaper at $1.10 / $4.40 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 200K.
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | o3-mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 36.7 | 38.1 |
| Rank | 212 | 190 |
| Context | 200K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $1.10 | $1.50 |
| Output $/M | $4.40 | $7.50 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- o3-mini: 40.8 (#132)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 35.5 (#223)

| Benchmark | o3-mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| GSO | 1.3% | 4.9% |
| WeirdML | 43.7% | 41.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1378 | 1412 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 55.4% |
| Aider Polyglot | 60.4% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1275 |
| SciCode | 39.8% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 82.7% | — |
| CadEval | 54% | — |
| ALE-Bench | — | 461.45 |
| AlgoTune | — | 1.44 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- o3-mini: 29.6 (#84)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 23.9 (#123)

| Benchmark | o3-mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 27.2% |
| Cybench | 22.5% | — |

## Reasoning

- o3-mini: 16.3 (#305)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 25.5 (#149)

| Benchmark | o3-mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1366 | 1372 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 3% | — |
| SimpleBench | 22.8% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 49.5% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 34.5% | — |
| CritPt | 0.3% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 17% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 89.6% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 7% | — |
| DTBench | 68.8% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 70.6% | — |
| LMCA | 19% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 140.34 | — |
| ForecastBench | 59.6 | — |
| LiveBench | 75.9% | — |

## Math

- o3-mini: 28.1 (#244)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 37.6 (#150)

| Benchmark | o3-mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1396 | 1365 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 18.6% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 0% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 76.9% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 77.3% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 96.5% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 12.4% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 4.2% | — |

## Knowledge

- o3-mini: 38.3 (#146)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 37.0 (#162)

| Benchmark | o3-mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1364 | 1338 |
| GPQA Diamond | 77% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 15.3% | — |
| Confabulations | 17.9% | — |

## Multilingual

- o3-mini: 45.7 (#164)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 47.7 (#148)

| Benchmark | o3-mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1319 | 1346 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1379 | 1357 |
| LMArena French | 1334 | 1398 |
| LMArena German | 1303 | 1325 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1286 | 1310 |
| LMArena Korean | 1314 | 1305 |
| LMArena Russian | 1304 | 1366 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1321 | 1360 |

## Instruction Following

- o3-mini: 75.1 (#72)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 71.6 (#147)

| Benchmark | o3-mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1337 | 1355 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 84.4% | — |

## Long Context

- o3-mini: 33.8 (#256)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 42.0 (#131)

| Benchmark | o3-mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1343 | 1378 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 50% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- o3-mini: 50.3 (#182)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 55.3 (#147)

| Benchmark | o3-mini | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1337 | 1357 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1286 | 1333 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1320 | 1365 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 61.7% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 50.7% | — |

## FAQ

### Is o3-mini better than Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?

Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.1 to 36.7 on the Noometry Index. o3-mini costs 1.6× 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, o3-mini or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?

o3-mini is cheaper. It lists at $1.10 per million input tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens; Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct lists at $1.50 and $7.50.

### Is o3-mini or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct better for coding?

o3-mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.8 versus 35.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct does, with 262K tokens against 200K.

### How many benchmarks do o3-mini and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct share?

19 benchmarks have published results for both models. o3-mini has 51 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has 25.