Model comparison

Grok-3 mini vs Qwen3 8B

Grok-3 mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.0 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 4 shared benchmarks.

Grok-3 mini xAI

41.0

Rank #130 Confirmed

Qwen3 8B Alibaba (Qwen)

33.3

Rank #237 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Grok-3 mini scores higher in 4 categories and Qwen3 8B in 1 category; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Grok-3 mini leads 46.3 to 36.1.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 77.8% for Grok-3 mini and 56.1% for Qwen3 8B.
  • Qwen3 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Grok-3 mini and Qwen3 8B specifications
Grok-3 miniQwen3 8B
ProviderxAIAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index41.033.3
Released2025-04-092025-04
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window—131K
Max output—8K
Input $ / M tokens—$0.18
Output $ / M tokens—$0.70
Results tracked3511

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Category by category

Coding Grok-3 mini leads

Grok-3 mini: 40.4 (#126), Qwen3 8B: 33.4 (#245)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3 8B
Aider Polyglot49.3%—
SciCode—22.6%
WeirdML42.6%—
LMArena Coding1380—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Grok-3 mini: —, Qwen3 8B: 29.9 (#71)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3 8B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—42.6%

Reasoning Qwen3 8B leads

Grok-3 mini: 13.8 (#323), Qwen3 8B: 16.1 (#299)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3 8B
Epoch Capabilities Index140.35136.17
ARC-AGI-20.4%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark61.3%—
ARC-AGI-116.5%—
CritPt—0%
Chess Puzzles—5%
LMArena Hard Prompts1374—
DTBench—59.7%
LMCA—8.8%

Math Grok-3 mini leads

Grok-3 mini: 40.3 (#78), Qwen3 8B: 33.3 (#176)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3 8B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202577.8%56.1%
Omni-MATH31.8%—
LMArena Math1386—
MATH Level 590.9%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)5.9%—

Knowledge Grok-3 mini leads

Grok-3 mini: 46.3 (#75), Qwen3 8B: 36.1 (#164)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3 8B
GPQA Diamond76.3%56.8%
MMLU-Pro79.9%—
Confabulations10.8%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate—4.8%
GPQA (HELM)67.5%—
LMArena Expert1395—

Multilingual Not comparable

Grok-3 mini: 48.3 (#141), Qwen3 8B: —

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3 8B
LMArena Non-English1352—
LMArena Chinese1387—
LMArena French1357—
LMArena German1350—
LMArena Japanese1343—
LMArena Korean1336—
LMArena Russian1352—
LMArena Spanish1379—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Grok-3 mini: 78.7 (#8), Qwen3 8B: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3 8B
IFEval95.1%—
LMArena Instruction Following1356—

Long Context Grok-3 mini leads

Grok-3 mini: 41.0 (#142), Qwen3 8B: 37.8 (#205)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3 8B
Fiction.LiveBench66.7%62.1%
LMArena Longer Query1372—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Grok-3 mini: 52.7 (#163), Qwen3 8B: —

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3 8B
LMArena Text1370—
LMArena Creative Writing1342—
Short-Story Creative Writing73.5%—
WildBench65.1%—
LMArena Multi-Turn1355—

Frequently asked questions

Is Grok-3 mini better than Qwen3 8B?

Grok-3 mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.0 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index.

Is Grok-3 mini or Qwen3 8B better for coding?

Grok-3 mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.4 versus 33.4 in the Noometry coding category.

How many benchmarks do Grok-3 mini and Qwen3 8B share?

4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Grok-3 mini has 35 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 8B has 11.

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