# Qwen2.5 72B Instruct vs Yi-Lightning

> Yi-Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.1 to 31.9 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/qwen2-5-72b-instruct-vs-yi-lightning
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Qwen2.5 72B Instruct scores higher in 1 category and Yi-Lightning in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Yi-Lightning leads 36.2 to 19.3.
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Yi-Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Alibaba (Qwen) | 01.AI |
| Noometry Index | 31.9 | 37.1 |
| Rank | 267 | 209 |
| Context | 131K | — |
| Input $/M | $1.40 | — |
| Output $/M | $5.60 | — |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 33.2 (#260)
- Yi-Lightning: 27.4 (#320)

| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Yi-Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1292 | 1312 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 12.9% |
| WeirdML | 16% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 45.8% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 55.9% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.1 (#133)
- Yi-Lightning: —

| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Yi-Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| TheAgentCompany | 5.7% | — |
| BALROG | 16.2% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 35.8% | — |

## Reasoning

- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.3 (#199)
- Yi-Lightning: 25.9 (#139)

| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Yi-Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1271 | 1302 |
| DTBench | 62.9% | — |
| LMCA | 13.4% | — |
| BIG-Bench Hard | 79.8% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 129 | — |
| ForecastBench | 57.5 | — |
| HellaSwag | 84.8% | — |
| PIQA | 82.6% | — |
| WinoGrande | 82.3% | — |

## Math

- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 19.3 (#287)
- Yi-Lightning: 36.2 (#172)

| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Yi-Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1283 | 1300 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 8.1% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 33% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 63.2% | — |

## Knowledge

- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 27.0 (#253)
- Yi-Lightning: 35.4 (#185)

| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Yi-Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1245 | 1286 |
| GPQA Diamond | 49.1% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 63.1% | — |
| Confabulations | 19.1% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 42.6% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | 94.5% | — |
| MMLU | 85.3% | — |
| TriviaQA | 71.9% | — |

## Multilingual

- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 41.0 (#213)
- Yi-Lightning: 42.2 (#196)

| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Yi-Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1252 | 1269 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1272 | 1320 |
| LMArena French | 1280 | 1305 |
| LMArena German | 1234 | 1267 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1180 | 1228 |
| LMArena Korean | 1188 | 1192 |
| LMArena Russian | 1264 | 1255 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1256 | 1315 |

## Instruction Following

- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 65.5 (#221)
- Yi-Lightning: 67.4 (#196)

| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Yi-Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1254 | 1278 |
| IFEval | 80.6% | — |

## Long Context

- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 38.9 (#188)
- Yi-Lightning: 39.4 (#181)

| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Yi-Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1282 | 1297 |

## Writing & Preference

- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 46.7 (#215)
- Yi-Lightning: 50.2 (#184)

| Benchmark | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Yi-Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1269 | 1302 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1221 | 1280 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1272 | 1311 |
| WildBench | 80.2% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Qwen2.5 72B Instruct better than Yi-Lightning?

Yi-Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.1 to 31.9 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Qwen2.5 72B Instruct or Yi-Lightning better for coding?

Qwen2.5 72B Instruct scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.2 versus 27.4 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Qwen2.5 72B Instruct and Yi-Lightning share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has 43 scored results on Noometry and Yi-Lightning has 18.