# Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct vs Qwen3-30B-A3B

> Qwen3-30B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.9 to 29.3 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/phi-3-small-8k-instruct-vs-qwen3-30b-a3b
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3-30B-A3B in 7 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen3-30B-A3B leads 55.6 to 31.1.

## Snapshot

| | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Microsoft | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 29.3 | 38.9 |
| Rank | 314 | 179 |
| Context | — | 41K |
| Input $/M | — | $0.12 |
| Output $/M | — | $0.50 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 27.9 (#318)
- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.5 (#194)

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1101 | 1416 |
| SciCode | — | 33.3% |
| WeirdML | — | 29.8% |
| LiveBench Coding | 20.3% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: —
- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 29.8 (#82)

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 41.4% |

## Reasoning

- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 14.8 (#323)
- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 22.2 (#204)

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1100 | 1398 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 54.9% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 8% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 15.9% | — |
| DTBench | — | 69.3% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 30.3% | — |
| LMCA | — | 22.4% |
| Adversarial NLI | 58.1% | — |
| BIG-Bench Hard | 79.1% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 139.63 |
| HellaSwag | 77% | — |
| LiveBench | 24% | — |
| WinoGrande | 81.5% | — |

## Math

- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 27.6 (#248)
- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.4 (#157)

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1151 | 1394 |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 47.8% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 70.3% |
| LiveBench Math | 17.6% | — |

## Knowledge

- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 29.1 (#240)
- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 41.8 (#105)

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1067 | 1396 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 70.1% |
| Confabulations | — | 12.3% |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | 90.7% | — |
| MMLU | 75.7% | — |
| OpenBookQA | 88% | — |
| TriviaQA | 58.1% | — |

## Multilingual

- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 28.5 (#272)
- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 49.5 (#132)

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1058 | 1372 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1061 | 1433 |
| LMArena French | 1135 | 1418 |
| LMArena German | 1080 | 1380 |
| LMArena Japanese | 966 | 1337 |
| LMArena Korean | 894 | 1331 |
| LMArena Russian | 1111 | 1370 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1111 | 1404 |

## Instruction Following

- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 51.9 (#292)
- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 72.0 (#142)

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1087 | 1363 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 47.2% | — |

## Long Context

- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 33.0 (#267)
- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 31.0 (#283)

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1088 | 1379 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 40.6% |

## Writing & Preference

- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 31.1 (#284)
- Qwen3-30B-A3B: 55.6 (#143)

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1110 | 1384 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1083 | 1317 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1068 | 1378 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 75.3% |
| LiveBench Language | 12.9% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct better than Qwen3-30B-A3B?

Qwen3-30B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.9 to 29.3 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct or Qwen3-30B-A3B better for coding?

Qwen3-30B-A3B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.5 versus 27.9 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct and Qwen3-30B-A3B share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct has 32 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-30B-A3B has 32.