o3 Mini vs Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
o3 Mini leads Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, 12.5 to 7.9, and Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct costs 6.3x less per output token ($0.70 vs $4.40 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 8 benchmarks have a result for both.
o3 Mini or Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct: which to pick
Neither model has a coding score yet, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Pick o3 Mini for work measured by MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run), where it leads.
- Shared results
- 8
- o3 Mini only
- 63
- Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct only
- 2
- Like-for-like categories
- 6 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
Neither has a coding score yet.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
o3 Mini
o3 Mini leads, 12.5 against 7.9.
Same board, both measured
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only o3 Mini has a GPQA Diamond result, 75.5%.
Directional only
Math
AIME
No call
Only o3 Mini has a AIME result, 86.5%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only o3 Mini has a MMLU Pro result, 78.7%.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct takes 262K tokens against 200K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
o3 Mini $0.0033, Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct $0.0006 per turn.
List prices
At a glance
- Coding index
- o3 Mini not benchmarked, Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- General, 22.0 points apart on average over 1 shared benchmark.
- Widest single gap
- IFBench: o3 Mini 67.1% against Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct 45.1%, 22.0 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- o3 Mini $4.40 against Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct $0.70 per million output tokens, 6.3x apart.
- Context window
- o3 Mini takes 200K tokens, Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct 262K.
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 | o3 Mini | Bars | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 2 | 0 | ||
| Intelligence | 1 | 0 | ||
| Agentic work | 1 | 0 | ||
| Reasoning | 2 | 0 | ||
| Knowledge | 0 | 1 | ||
| General | 1 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 7 | 1 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index20
| Benchmark | o3 Mini | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aider polyglot | 60.4% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| SWE-bench Verified | 42.4% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| SWE-bench Lite | 32.3% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 71.5% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | 73.4% | 69.7% | o3 Mini |
| SciCode | 42.8% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 6.8% | 6.1% | o3 Mini |
| GSO-Bench | 1.3% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| WeirdML | 43.7% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| Cybench | 22.5% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1378 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1364 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| SciCode | 7.7% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 26 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | o3 Mini | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 12.5 | 7.9 | o3 Mini |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 140.2 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | o3 Mini | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 31.3% | 19.9% | o3 Mini |
| Neither model has a result on the other 40 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | o3 Mini | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 75.5% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 77.3% | 72.0% | o3 Mini |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 12.0% | 8.9% | o3 Mini |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 77.0% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| ARC-AGI | 34.5% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 3.0% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| SimpleBench | 22.8% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| Chess puzzles | 15.0% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | 7.0% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1365 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1364 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1375 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 10 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index11 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | o3 Mini | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | 86.5% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| MATH 500 (Vals AI) | 91.8% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| MGSM (Vals AI) | 91.3% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| AA Math Index | Not measured | 82.3 | Only Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct measured |
| AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 82.3% | Only Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct measured |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 76.9% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | 18.6% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | 0.0% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| MATH level 5 | 96.5% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1396 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1399 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 2 boards here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index01
| Benchmark | o3 Mini | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 78.7% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 71.5% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 45.3% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 69.4% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | 94.8% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | 80.2% | 80.7% | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct |
| SimpleQA Verified | 15.3% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1339 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1330 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1328 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1313 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here | |||
Web designNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | o3 Mini | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 9 boards here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | o3 Mini | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| IFBench | 67.1% | 45.1% | o3 Mini |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 43.0% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| DTBench | 68.8% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMCA | 19.0% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 50.0% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| Creative writing (Lech Mazur) | 61.7% | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text | 1337 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1337 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1286 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1351 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1319 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1379 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: German | 1303 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1286 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1313 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1334 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1321 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1304 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1294 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1320 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1343 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1313 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1283 | Not measured | Only o3 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 23 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | o3 Mini | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B 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
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct 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 o3 Mini | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | OpenAI | Qwen |
| Weights | No public weights listed | Open weights |
| Released | January 31, 2025 | October 6, 2025 |
| Context window | 200K | 262K |
| Input $/Mtok | $1.10 | $0.20 |
| Output $/Mtok | $4.40 | $0.70 |
| Coding index | Not benchmarked | Not benchmarked |
| Independent measurements behind it | 0 | 0 |
| Cost per solved task | Not computable | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is o3 Mini better than Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct for coding?
Neither model has a coding score yet, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick o3 Mini for work measured by MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run), where it leads.
Which is cheaper, o3 Mini or Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct?
o3 Mini costs $1.10 per million input tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens; Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct costs $0.20 and $0.70. Cost per solved task is known for neither of them.
Which has the bigger context window, o3 Mini or Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct?
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct, with 262K tokens against 200K.
How many benchmarks is the o3 Mini vs Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct comparison based on?
8 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. o3 Mini's coding index rests on 0 independent benchmarks and Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct's on 0. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.