# phi-3-medium 14B vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct

> Qwen2.5 72B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.9 to 29.7 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/phi-3-medium-14b-vs-qwen2-5-72b-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 11

## Summary

- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. phi-3-medium 14B scores higher in 2 categories and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct in 1 category; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen2.5 72B Instruct leads 27.0 to 9.1.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is MATH Level 5: 17.6% for phi-3-medium 14B and 63.2% for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct.

## Snapshot

| | phi-3-medium 14B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Microsoft | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 29.7 | 31.9 |
| Rank | 306 | 267 |
| Context | — | 131K |
| Input $/M | — | $1.40 |
| Output $/M | — | $5.60 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- phi-3-medium 14B: 36.8 (#201)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 33.2 (#260)

| Benchmark | phi-3-medium 14B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 37.6% | 45.8% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 48.7% | 55.9% |
| WeirdML | — | 16% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1292 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- phi-3-medium 14B: —
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.1 (#133)

| Benchmark | phi-3-medium 14B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| TheAgentCompany | — | 5.7% |
| BALROG | — | 16.2% |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 35.8% |

## Reasoning

- phi-3-medium 14B: —
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.3 (#199)

| Benchmark | phi-3-medium 14B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| BIG-Bench Hard | 81.4% | 79.8% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 121.23 | 129 |
| HellaSwag | 82.4% | 84.8% |
| WinoGrande | 81.5% | 82.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1271 |
| DTBench | — | 62.9% |
| LMCA | — | 13.4% |
| Adversarial NLI | 55.8% | — |
| ForecastBench | — | 57.5 |
| PIQA | — | 82.6% |

## Math

- phi-3-medium 14B: 27.3 (#250)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 19.3 (#287)

| Benchmark | phi-3-medium 14B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| MATH Level 5 | 17.6% | 63.2% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 8.1% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 33% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1283 |

## Knowledge

- phi-3-medium 14B: 9.1 (#306)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 27.0 (#253)

| Benchmark | phi-3-medium 14B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 27.6% | 49.1% |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | 91.6% | 94.5% |
| MMLU | 78% | 85.3% |
| TriviaQA | 73.9% | 71.9% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 63.1% |
| Confabulations | — | 19.1% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 42.6% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1245 |
| OpenBookQA | 87.4% | — |

## Multilingual

- phi-3-medium 14B: —
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 41.0 (#213)

| Benchmark | phi-3-medium 14B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1252 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1272 |
| LMArena French | — | 1280 |
| LMArena German | — | 1234 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1180 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1188 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1264 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1256 |

## Instruction Following

- phi-3-medium 14B: —
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 65.5 (#221)

| Benchmark | phi-3-medium 14B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | — | 80.6% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1254 |

## Long Context

- phi-3-medium 14B: —
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 38.9 (#188)

| Benchmark | phi-3-medium 14B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1282 |

## Writing & Preference

- phi-3-medium 14B: —
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 46.7 (#215)

| Benchmark | phi-3-medium 14B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1269 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1221 |
| WildBench | — | 80.2% |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1272 |

## FAQ

### Is phi-3-medium 14B better than Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?

Qwen2.5 72B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.9 to 29.7 on the Noometry Index.

### Is phi-3-medium 14B or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct better for coding?

phi-3-medium 14B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.8 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do phi-3-medium 14B and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. phi-3-medium 14B has 13 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has 43.