# Qwen2-72B vs StarCoder 2 3B

> Qwen2-72B has enough public results to be ranked (#300); StarCoder 2 3B does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/qwen2-72b-vs-starcoder-2-3b
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 3

## Summary

- They share 3 benchmarks with published results for both. Qwen2-72B scores higher in 0 categories and StarCoder 2 3B in 1 category; one gap is clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where StarCoder 2 3B leads 33.5 to 29.1.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is BigCodeBench Complete: 54% for Qwen2-72B and 21.4% for StarCoder 2 3B.

## Snapshot

| | Qwen2-72B | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Alibaba (Qwen) | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 30.0 | 36.3 |
| Rank | 300 | — |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Qwen2-72B: 29.1 (#310)
- StarCoder 2 3B: 33.5

| Benchmark | Qwen2-72B | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Complete | 54% | 21.4% |
| WeirdML | 11.3% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 38.5% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1196 | — |
| HumanEval+ | — | 27.4% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Qwen2-72B: 17.0 (#146)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Qwen2-72B | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| TheAgentCompany | 1.1% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 29.9% | — |

## Reasoning

- Qwen2-72B: 23.2 (#181)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Qwen2-72B | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 125.28 | 88.76 |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1191 | — |
| WinoGrande | — | 57.1% |

## Math

- Qwen2-72B: 30.2 (#236)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Qwen2-72B | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1235 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 39.1% | — |
| GSM8K | — | 21.6% |

## Knowledge

- Qwen2-72B: 21.2 (#275)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Qwen2-72B | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU | 82.4% | 36.6% |
| GPQA Diamond | 40.8% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1171 | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 34.2% |

## Multilingual

- Qwen2-72B: 35.9 (#244)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Qwen2-72B | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1176 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1240 | — |
| LMArena French | 1170 | — |
| LMArena German | 1151 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1111 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1083 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1169 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1169 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Qwen2-72B: 61.7 (#241)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Qwen2-72B | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1181 | — |

## Long Context

- Qwen2-72B: 36.1 (#235)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Qwen2-72B | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1192 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Qwen2-72B: 40.8 (#241)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Qwen2-72B | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1203 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1181 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1196 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Qwen2-72B better than StarCoder 2 3B?

Qwen2-72B has enough public results to be ranked (#300); StarCoder 2 3B does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.

### Is Qwen2-72B or StarCoder 2 3B better for coding?

StarCoder 2 3B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.5 versus 29.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Qwen2-72B and StarCoder 2 3B share?

3 benchmarks have published results for both models. Qwen2-72B has 26 scored results on Noometry and StarCoder 2 3B has 7.