# Qwen2.5 32B Instruct vs Qwen3 32B

> Qwen3 32B is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.2 to 30.1 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/qwen2-5-32b-instruct-vs-qwen3-32b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 4

## Summary

- They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Qwen2.5 32B Instruct scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3 32B in 3 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3 32B leads 39.7 to 16.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 7.4% for Qwen2.5 32B Instruct and 66.9% for Qwen3 32B.
- Both cost about the same: $0.70 input and $2.80 output per million tokens.

## Snapshot

| | Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Alibaba (Qwen) | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 30.1 | 39.2 |
| Rank | 297 | 172 |
| Context | 131K | 131K |
| Input $/M | $0.70 | $0.70 |
| Output $/M | $2.80 | $2.80 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: 38.7 (#169)
- Qwen3 32B: 37.7 (#190)

| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| Aider Polyglot | — | 40% |
| SciCode | — | 35.4% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 45% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1358 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 52.3% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: —
- Qwen3 32B: 32.6 (#62)

| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 48.7% |

## Reasoning

- Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: 19.2 (#266)
- Qwen3 32B: 20.2 (#241)

| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | 5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 128.52 | 138.51 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 54.9% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1334 |
| DTBench | — | 67.5% |
| LMCA | — | 17.3% |

## Math

- Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: 16.2 (#296)
- Qwen3 32B: 39.7 (#99)

| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 7.4% | 66.9% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1399 |
| MATH Level 5 | 56.1% | — |

## Knowledge

- Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: 24.9 (#266)
- Qwen3 32B: 40.0 (#125)

| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 46.1% | 65.7% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 5.9% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1362 |

## Multilingual

- Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: —
- Qwen3 32B: 45.6 (#167)

| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1317 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1357 |
| LMArena German | — | 1341 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1311 |

## Instruction Following

- Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: —
- Qwen3 32B: 68.9 (#179)

| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1305 |

## Long Context

- Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: —
- Qwen3 32B: 43.8 (#87)

| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 74.2% |
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1327 |

## Writing & Preference

- Qwen2.5 32B Instruct: —
- Qwen3 32B: 52.9 (#163)

| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1340 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1297 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1331 |

## FAQ

### Is Qwen2.5 32B Instruct better than Qwen3 32B?

Qwen3 32B is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.2 to 30.1 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Qwen2.5 32B Instruct or Qwen3 32B?

Qwen3 32B is cheaper. It lists at $0.70 per million input tokens and $2.80 per million output tokens; Qwen2.5 32B Instruct lists at $0.70 and $2.80.

### Is Qwen2.5 32B Instruct or Qwen3 32B better for coding?

Qwen2.5 32B Instruct scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.7 versus 37.7 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 131K tokens.

### How many benchmarks do Qwen2.5 32B Instruct and Qwen3 32B share?

4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Qwen2.5 32B Instruct has 7 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 32B has 26.