o3 vs Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct
Updated October 21, 2026. 11 benchmarks have a result for both. Coding is ranked on the Vibe Coding Index; every other board is shown as published.
Decision reading
Neither model has a coding score yet, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Compare them on price, context and the boards below.
- Shared results
- 11
- o3 only
- 86
- Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct only
- 0
- Like-for-like categories
- 7 of 9
Shared results can support a head-to-head reading. Results only one model has describe coverage, not superiority.
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
o3 leads, 20.2 against 7.3.
Same board, both measured
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only o3 has a GPQA Diamond result, 84.1%.
Directional only
Math
AIME
No call
Only o3 has a AIME result, 85.3%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only o3 has a MMLU Pro result, 85.6%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only o3 has a Design Arena: websites result, 1036.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct takes 262K tokens against 200K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct
o3 $0.0060, Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct $0.0006 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only o3 has the number, $0.571.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- o3 not benchmarked, Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- Math, 57.6 points apart on average over 2 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run): o3 88.3% against Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct 30.7%, 57.7 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- o3 $8.00 against Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct $0.75 per million output tokens, 10.7x apart.
- Context window
- o3 takes 200K tokens, Qwen3 VL 8B 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 | Bars | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 2 | 0 | ||
| Intelligence | 1 | 0 | ||
| Agentic work | 1 | 0 | ||
| Reasoning | 2 | 0 | ||
| Math | 2 | 0 | ||
| Knowledge | 1 | 0 | ||
| General | 2 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 11 | 0 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index20
| Benchmark | o3 | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aider polyglot | 81.3% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| SWE-bench Verified | 58.4% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| SWE-bench Multimodal | 36.0% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 83.9% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | 80.8% | 35.3% | o3 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 37.1% | 3.8% | o3 |
| GSO-Bench | 8.8% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| WeirdML | 52.4% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| ALE-Bench | 933.5 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1407 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1415 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 27 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | o3 | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 20.2 | 7.3 | o3 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 146.7 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | o3 | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 80.7% | 29.2% | o3 |
| METR time horizons | 65.4% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| GDPval | 30.8% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| DeepResearch Bench | 45.2% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| OSWorld | 23.0% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 34 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | o3 | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 84.1% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 80.4% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 82.7% | 57.9% | o3 |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 20.1% | 3.8% | o3 |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 81.8% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| ARC-AGI | 60.8% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 6.5% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| SimpleBench | 53.1% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Chess puzzles | 37.0% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | 29.0% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| VPCT | 52.0% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1402 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1402 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1411 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: diagrams | 1220 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: homework | 1234 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 5 boards here | |||
MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | o3 | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | 85.3% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| MATH 500 (Vals AI) | 94.6% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| MGSM (Vals AI) | 91.8% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| AA Math Index | 88.3 | 30.7 | o3 |
| AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run) | 88.3% | 30.7% | o3 |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 84.4% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | 33.3% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| MATH level 5 | 97.8% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1426 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1423 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 3 boards here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | o3 | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 85.6% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 83.8% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 59.7% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 74.6% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 65.7% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | 96.1% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 47.3% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | 85.3% | 74.9% | o3 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 49.4% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| GeoBench | 74.0% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1429 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1448 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1428 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1393 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 3 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index5 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | o3 | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1036 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1017 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1034 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1200 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1020 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 4 boards here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | o3 | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 41.8% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 76.7% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| IFBench | 71.4% | 39.9% | o3 |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 74.7% | 33.3% | o3 |
| DTBench | 84.8% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMCA | 39.7% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 88.9% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Creative writing (Lech Mazur) | 83.9% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| CL-bench | 17.8% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text | 1410 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1368 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1359 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Vision | 1214 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1417 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1401 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1437 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: German | 1420 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1403 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1370 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1430 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1395 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1406 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1438 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1405 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1372 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1372 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1373 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: English | 1221 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: Chinese | 1237 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: reading text | 1218 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: humor | 1222 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: captioning | 1210 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: recognizing things | 1234 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: creative writing | 1201 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 12 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | o3 | Qwen3 VL 8B 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 8B Instruct costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Qwen3 VL 8B 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 | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | OpenAI | Qwen |
| Weights | No public weights listed | Open weights |
| Released | April 16, 2025 | October 14, 2025 |
| Context window | 200K | 262K |
| Input $/Mtok | $2.00 | $0.25 |
| Output $/Mtok | $8.00 | $0.75 |
| Coding index | Not benchmarked | Not benchmarked |
| Independent measurements behind it | 0 | 0 |
| Cost per solved task | $0.571 | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is o3 better than Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct for coding?
Neither model has a coding score yet, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Compare them on price, context and the boards below.
Which is cheaper, o3 or Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct?
o3 costs $2.00 per million input tokens and $8.00 per million output tokens; Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct costs $0.25 and $0.75. Cost per solved task is known for o3 only.
Which has the bigger context window, o3 or Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct?
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct, with 262K tokens against 200K.
How many benchmarks is the o3 vs Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct comparison based on?
11 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. o3's coding index rests on 0 independent benchmarks and Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct's on 0. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.