# Phi-4 vs Qwen Plus

> Qwen Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.1 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Phi-4 costs 6.9× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/phi-4-vs-qwen-plus
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 16

## Summary

- They share 16 benchmarks with published results for both. Phi-4 scores higher in 1 category and Qwen Plus in 7 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen Plus leads 52.2 to 40.5.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 56.1% for Phi-4 and 48.1% for Qwen Plus.
- Phi-4 is cheaper at $0.07 / $0.14 per million input/output tokens, against $0.40 / $1.20 for Qwen Plus.
- Qwen Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.
- Phi-4 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Phi-4 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Microsoft | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 31.2 | 37.1 |
| Rank | 279 | 210 |
| Context | 128K | 1M |
| Input $/M | $0.07 | $0.40 |
| Output $/M | $0.14 | $1.20 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Phi-4: 34.4 (#239)
- Qwen Plus: 38.9 (#167)

| Benchmark | Phi-4 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1231 | 1328 |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 45.5% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 30.7% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 55.4% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Phi-4: 22.8 (#128)
- Qwen Plus: —

| Benchmark | Phi-4 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 28.8% | — |
| BALROG | 11.6% | — |

## Reasoning

- Phi-4: 17.7 (#291)
- Qwen Plus: 28.4 (#107)

| Benchmark | Phi-4 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1220 | 1317 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 63.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 1% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 47.8% | — |
| DTBench | — | 81.1% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 45.2% | — |
| LMCA | — | 24% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 130.42 | — |
| LiveBench | 41.6% | — |

## Math

- Phi-4: 20.8 (#285)
- Qwen Plus: 23.3 (#271)

| Benchmark | Phi-4 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 13.8% | 17.8% |
| LMArena Math | 1246 | 1326 |
| MATH Level 5 | 64.9% | 65.3% |
| LiveBench Math | 42% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 1.7% |

## Knowledge

- Phi-4: 32.6 (#209)
- Qwen Plus: 27.4 (#251)

| Benchmark | Phi-4 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 56.1% | 48.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1203 | 1328 |
| Confabulations | 29.4% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 3.7% | — |
| MMLU | 84.8% | — |

## Multilingual

- Phi-4: 37.2 (#237)
- Qwen Plus: 45.1 (#175)

| Benchmark | Phi-4 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1197 | 1310 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1212 | 1347 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1158 | 1251 |
| LMArena Russian | 1209 | 1323 |
| LMArena French | 1224 | — |
| LMArena German | 1222 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1151 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1234 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Phi-4: 60.4 (#251)
- Qwen Plus: 68.8 (#181)

| Benchmark | Phi-4 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1201 | 1303 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 58.4% | — |

## Long Context

- Phi-4: 36.9 (#226)
- Qwen Plus: 40.3 (#158)

| Benchmark | Phi-4 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1217 | 1324 |

## Writing & Preference

- Phi-4: 40.5 (#244)
- Qwen Plus: 52.2 (#176)

| Benchmark | Phi-4 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1217 | 1326 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1182 | 1293 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1206 | 1336 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 62.6% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 25.6% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Phi-4 better than Qwen Plus?

Qwen Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.1 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Phi-4 costs 6.9× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Phi-4 or Qwen Plus?

Phi-4 is cheaper. It lists at $0.07 per million input tokens and $0.14 per million output tokens; Qwen Plus lists at $0.40 and $1.20.

### Is Phi-4 or Qwen Plus better for coding?

Qwen Plus scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.9 versus 34.4 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen Plus does, with 1M tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Phi-4 and Qwen Plus share?

16 benchmarks have published results for both models. Phi-4 has 37 scored results on Noometry and Qwen Plus has 20.