# Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct vs StarCoder 2 7B

> Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct has enough public results to be ranked (#314); StarCoder 2 7B does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/phi-3-small-8k-instruct-vs-starcoder-2-7b
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 3

## Summary

- They share 3 benchmarks with published results for both. Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct scores higher in 0 categories and StarCoder 2 7B in 1 category; one gap is clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where StarCoder 2 7B leads 34.8 to 27.9.

## Snapshot

| | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct | StarCoder 2 7B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Microsoft | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 29.3 | 37.0 |
| Rank | 314 | — |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 27.9 (#318)
- StarCoder 2 7B: 34.8

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct | StarCoder 2 7B |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Coding | 20.3% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1101 | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 27.7% |
| HumanEval+ | — | 29.9% |

## Reasoning

- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 14.8 (#323)
- StarCoder 2 7B: —

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct | StarCoder 2 7B |
|---|---|---|
| WinoGrande | 81.5% | 57.1% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 15.9% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1100 | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 30.3% | — |
| Adversarial NLI | 58.1% | — |
| BIG-Bench Hard | 79.1% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 93.56 |
| HellaSwag | 77% | — |
| LiveBench | 24% | — |

## Math

- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 27.6 (#248)
- StarCoder 2 7B: —

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct | StarCoder 2 7B |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Math | 17.6% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1151 | — |
| GSM8K | — | 32.7% |

## Knowledge

- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 29.1 (#240)
- StarCoder 2 7B: —

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct | StarCoder 2 7B |
|---|---|---|
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | 90.7% | 38.7% |
| MMLU | 75.7% | 38.8% |
| LMArena Expert | 1067 | — |
| OpenBookQA | 88% | — |
| TriviaQA | 58.1% | — |

## Multilingual

- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 28.5 (#272)
- StarCoder 2 7B: —

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct | StarCoder 2 7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1058 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1061 | — |
| LMArena French | 1135 | — |
| LMArena German | 1080 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 966 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 894 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1111 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1111 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 51.9 (#292)
- StarCoder 2 7B: —

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct | StarCoder 2 7B |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 47.2% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1087 | — |

## Long Context

- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 33.0 (#267)
- StarCoder 2 7B: —

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct | StarCoder 2 7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1088 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 31.1 (#284)
- StarCoder 2 7B: —

| Benchmark | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct | StarCoder 2 7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1110 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1083 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1068 | — |
| LiveBench Language | 12.9% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct better than StarCoder 2 7B?

Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct has enough public results to be ranked (#314); StarCoder 2 7B does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.

### Is Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct or StarCoder 2 7B better for coding?

StarCoder 2 7B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 34.8 versus 27.9 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct and StarCoder 2 7B share?

3 benchmarks have published results for both models. Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct has 32 scored results on Noometry and StarCoder 2 7B has 7.