# Phi-4 vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct

> Phi-4 and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (30.9 vs 31.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/phi-4-vs-qwen2-5-72b-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 26

## Summary

- They share 26 benchmarks with published results for both. Phi-4 scores higher in 4 categories and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct in 5 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen2.5 72B Instruct leads 46.9 to 40.7.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Confabulations: 29.4% for Phi-4 and 19.1% for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct.
- Phi-4 is cheaper at $0.07 / $0.14 per million input/output tokens, against $1.40 / $5.60 for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct.
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 128K.

## Snapshot

| | Phi-4 | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Microsoft | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 30.9 | 31.5 |
| Rank | 269 | 259 |
| Context | 128K | 131K |
| Input $/M | $0.07 | $1.40 |
| Output $/M | $0.14 | $5.60 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Phi-4: 33.8 (#237)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 32.8 (#256)

| Benchmark | Phi-4 | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 45.5% | 45.8% |
| LMArena Coding | 1231 | 1293 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 55.4% | 55.9% |
| WeirdML | — | 16% |
| LiveBench Coding | 30.7% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Phi-4: 22.6 (#120)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.0 (#124)

| Benchmark | Phi-4 | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| BALROG | 11.6% | 16.2% |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 28.8% | — |
| TheAgentCompany | — | 5.7% |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 35.8% |

## Reasoning

- Phi-4: 17.0 (#287)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 21.4 (#197)

| Benchmark | Phi-4 | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1220 | 1271 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 130.43 | 129.01 |
| Chess Puzzles | 1% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 47.8% | — |
| DTBench | — | 62.9% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 45.2% | — |
| LMCA | — | 13.4% |
| BIG-Bench Hard | — | 79.8% |
| ForecastBench | — | 57.5 |
| HellaSwag | — | 84.8% |
| LiveBench | 41.6% | — |
| PIQA | — | 82.6% |
| WinoGrande | — | 82.3% |

## Math

- Phi-4: 19.6 (#279)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 18.1 (#281)

| Benchmark | Phi-4 | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 13.8% | 8.1% |
| LMArena Math | 1246 | 1283 |
| MATH Level 5 | 64.9% | 63.2% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 33% |
| LiveBench Math | 42% | — |

## Knowledge

- Phi-4: 32.5 (#204)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 26.9 (#247)

| Benchmark | Phi-4 | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 56.1% | 49.1% |
| Confabulations | 29.4% | 19.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1203 | 1245 |
| MMLU | 84.8% | 85.3% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 63.1% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 3.7% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 42.6% |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 94.5% |
| TriviaQA | — | 71.9% |

## Multilingual

- Phi-4: 37.4 (#232)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 41.2 (#208)

| Benchmark | Phi-4 | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1197 | 1252 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1211 | 1272 |
| LMArena French | 1223 | 1279 |
| LMArena German | 1222 | 1234 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1158 | 1180 |
| LMArena Korean | 1151 | 1188 |
| LMArena Russian | 1209 | 1264 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1234 | 1255 |

## Instruction Following

- Phi-4: 60.6 (#246)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 65.7 (#216)

| Benchmark | Phi-4 | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1201 | 1254 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 58.4% | — |
| IFEval | — | 80.6% |

## Long Context

- Phi-4: 36.9 (#221)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 38.9 (#183)

| Benchmark | Phi-4 | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1217 | 1282 |

## Writing & Preference

- Phi-4: 40.7 (#239)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 46.9 (#210)

| Benchmark | Phi-4 | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1217 | 1269 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1182 | 1221 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1206 | 1272 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 62.6% | — |
| WildBench | — | 80.2% |
| LiveBench Language | 25.6% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Phi-4 better than Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?

Phi-4 and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (30.9 vs 31.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Which is cheaper, Phi-4 or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?

Phi-4 is cheaper. It lists at $0.07 per million input tokens and $0.14 per million output tokens; Qwen2.5 72B Instruct lists at $1.40 and $5.60.

### Is Phi-4 or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct better for coding?

Phi-4 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.8 versus 32.8 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen2.5 72B Instruct does, with 131K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Phi-4 and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct share?

26 benchmarks have published results for both models. Phi-4 has 37 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has 43.