GPT-5 Mini vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
GPT-5 Mini leads Qwen2.5 72B Instruct on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, 20.6 to 7.7, and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct costs 5.0x less per output token ($0.40 vs $2.00 per million). Updated October 21, 2026; 44 benchmarks have a result for both.
GPT-5 Mini or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: which to pick
Only GPT-5 Mini has a coding score, 34.2 on the Vibe Coding Index; Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Pick Qwen2.5 72B Instruct for output tokens 5.0x cheaper ($0.40 vs $2.00 per million).
- Shared results
- 44
- GPT-5 Mini only
- 57
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct only
- 9
- Like-for-like categories
- 7 of 9
Only benchmarks that tested both models count toward a pick; a result only one model has is shown but not compared.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
No call
Only GPT-5 Mini has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
GPT-5 Mini
GPT-5 Mini leads, 20.6 against 7.7.
Same board, both measured
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only GPT-5 Mini has a GPQA Diamond result, 80.3%.
Directional only
Math
AIME
No call
Only GPT-5 Mini has a AIME result, 91.5%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only GPT-5 Mini has a MMLU Pro result, 82.2%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only GPT-5 Mini has a Design Arena: websites result, 1125.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
GPT-5 Mini
GPT-5 Mini takes 400K tokens against 33K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
GPT-5 Mini $0.0013, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct $0.0006 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only GPT-5 Mini has the number, $0.08.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- GPT-5 Mini 34.2 from 2 benchmarks, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- Math, 49.6 points apart on average over 6 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- OTIS Mock AIME: GPT-5 Mini 86.7% against Qwen2.5 72B Instruct 8.1%, 78.6 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- GPT-5 Mini $2.00 against Qwen2.5 72B Instruct $0.40 per million output tokens, 5.0x apart.
- Context window
- GPT-5 Mini takes 400K tokens, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct 33K.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | GPT-5 Mini | Bars | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 5 | 0 | ||
| Intelligence | 2 | 0 | ||
| Agentic work | 1 | 0 | ||
| Reasoning | 6 | 0 | ||
| Math | 6 | 0 | ||
| Knowledge | 5 | 0 | ||
| General | 19 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 44 | 0 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index50
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | 59.8% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 39.7% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 86.6% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | 60.8% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 14.2% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | 83.8% | 27.6% | GPT-5 Mini |
| SciCode | 39.0% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 33.3% | 4.5% | GPT-5 Mini |
| Terminal-Bench | 34.8% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| WeirdML | 52.7% | 16.0% | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1406 | 1292 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1394 | 1292 | GPT-5 Mini |
| Neither model has a result on the other 27 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 20.6 | 7.7 | GPT-5 Mini |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 145.3 | 129.0 | GPT-5 Mini |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 71.1% | 34.5% | GPT-5 Mini |
| METR time horizons | Not measured | 35.8% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| BALROG | Not measured | 16.2% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| TheAgentCompany | Not measured | 5.7% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | -$31 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) | 55.5% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 35 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index60
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 80.3% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 78.9% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 82.8% | 49.1% | GPT-5 Mini |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 21.5% | 3.6% | GPT-5 Mini |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 75.0% | 49.1% | GPT-5 Mini |
| ARC-AGI | 54.3% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 4.4% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Chess puzzles | 24.0% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | 10.0% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| VPCT | 40.2% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| BIG-Bench Hard | Not measured | 79.8% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1380 | 1271 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1379 | 1245 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1383 | 1279 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Vision: diagrams | 1202 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: homework | 1210 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 70.3% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 5 boards here | |||
MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index60
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | 91.5% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| MATH 500 (Vals AI) | 94.8% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| MGSM (Vals AI) | 92.6% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| AA Math Index | 90.7 | 14.0 | GPT-5 Mini |
| AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run) | 90.7% | 14.0% | GPT-5 Mini |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 86.7% | 8.1% | GPT-5 Mini |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | 46.7% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | 12.2% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| ProofBench | 9.0% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| MATH level 5 | 97.8% | 63.2% | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: math | 1378 | 1283 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1380 | 1290 | GPT-5 Mini |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index50
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 82.2% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 81.8% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| CaseLaw (Vals AI) | 68.5% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 60.2% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 75.2% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 66.9% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | 96.1% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 43.0% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | 83.7% | 72.0% | GPT-5 Mini |
| SimpleQA Verified | 21.6% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| MMLU | Not measured | 85.3% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| AI2 Reasoning Challenge | Not measured | 94.5% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1371 | 1275 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1380 | 1258 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1375 | 1288 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1358 | 1253 | GPT-5 Mini |
| FACTS Benchmark Suite | 38.6% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index8 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1125 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1106 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1130 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1130 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1037 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1115 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1091 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | 1125 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index190
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 43.0% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 80.6% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| IFBench | 75.4% | 36.9% | GPT-5 Mini |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 72.3% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| DTBench | 80.5% | 62.9% | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMCA | 34.2% | 13.4% | GPT-5 Mini |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 69.4% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Creative writing (Lech Mazur) | 83.1% | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| HellaSwag | Not measured | 84.8% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| WinoGrande | Not measured | 82.3% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| PIQA | Not measured | 82.6% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| LMArena Text | 1373 | 1269 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1357 | 1254 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1325 | 1221 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Vision | 1202 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1379 | 1283 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1363 | 1252 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1386 | 1273 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: German | 1366 | 1234 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1341 | 1180 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1308 | 1188 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: French | 1386 | 1280 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1354 | 1255 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1362 | 1264 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1378 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1363 | 1272 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1355 | 1281 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1344 | 1247 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1340 | 1211 | GPT-5 Mini |
| LMArena Vision: English | 1216 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: Chinese | 1214 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: reading text | 1199 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: humor | 1205 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: captioning | 1217 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: recognizing things | 1226 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: creative writing | 1181 | Not measured | Only GPT-5 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 10 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
GPT-5 Mini costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
GPT-5 Mini costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | OpenAI GPT-5 Mini | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | OpenAI | Qwen |
| Weights | No public weights listed | Open weights |
| Released | August 7, 2025 | September 19, 2024 |
| Context window | 400K | 33K |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.25 | $0.36 |
| Output $/Mtok | $2.00 | $0.40 |
| Coding index | 34.2 | Not benchmarked |
| Independent measurements behind it | 2 | 0 |
| Cost per solved task | $0.08 | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is GPT-5 Mini better than Qwen2.5 72B Instruct for coding?
Only GPT-5 Mini has a coding score, 34.2 on the Vibe Coding Index; Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick Qwen2.5 72B Instruct for output tokens 5.0x cheaper ($0.40 vs $2.00 per million).
Which is cheaper, GPT-5 Mini or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?
GPT-5 Mini costs $0.25 per million input tokens and $2.00 per million output tokens; Qwen2.5 72B Instruct costs $0.36 and $0.40. Cost per solved task is known for GPT-5 Mini only.
Which has the bigger context window, GPT-5 Mini or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?
GPT-5 Mini, with 400K tokens against 33K.
How many benchmarks is the GPT-5 Mini vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct comparison based on?
44 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. GPT-5 Mini's coding index rests on 2 independent benchmarks and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct's on 0. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.