Model comparison

o4-mini vs Qwen3.8 27B

Qwen3.8 27B is the stronger model overall, scoring 45.3 to 41.6 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 22 shared benchmarks.

o4-mini OpenAI

41.6

Rank #119 Confirmed

Qwen3.8 27B Alibaba (Qwen)

45.3

Rank #64 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 22 benchmarks with published results for both. o4-mini scores higher in 3 categories and Qwen3.8 27B in 6 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen3.8 27B leads 65.9 to 54.2.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is LMCA: 26.5% for o4-mini and 41.4% for Qwen3.8 27B.
  • Qwen3.8 27B is cheaper at $0.99 / $1.49 per million input/output tokens, against $1.10 / $4.40 for o4-mini.
  • Qwen3.8 27B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 200K.
  • Qwen3.8 27B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

o4-mini and Qwen3.8 27B specifications
o4-miniQwen3.8 27B
ProviderOpenAIAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index41.645.3
Released2025-04-162026-08-14
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window200K262K
Max output100K33K
Input $ / M tokens$1.10$0.99
Output $ / M tokens$4.40$1.49
Results tracked6028

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Category by category

Coding Qwen3.8 27B leads

o4-mini: 41.6 (#110), Qwen3.8 27B: 50.3 (#42)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3.8 27B
LMArena Coding13691487
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)45%—
Aider Polyglot72%—
LMArena WebDev—1592
SciCode—46.6%
GSO3.6%—
WeirdML52.6%—
CadEval62%—
ALE-Bench826.17—
AlgoTune1.72—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

o4-mini: 32.3 (#57), Qwen3.8 27B: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3.8 27B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard53.2%—
GDPval25.3%—
METR Time Horizons63.9%—

Reasoning Qwen3.8 27B leads

o4-mini: 24.6 (#143), Qwen3.8 27B: 31.5 (#71)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3.8 27B
CritPt0.6%5.4%
LMArena Hard Prompts13511459
DTBench77.6%88%
LMCA26.5%41.4%
Epoch Capabilities Index145.63149.38
ARC-AGI-26.1%—
SimpleBench38.7%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark67.6%—
NYT Connections (extended)—54.5%
ARC-AGI-158.7%—
Chess Puzzles26%—
EnigmaEval9.2%—
Mystery Game Puzzles5%—
Surface Evolver Bench—45%
ForecastBench61.8—

Math o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 40.2 (#79), Qwen3.8 27B: 35.7 (#139)

Math benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3.8 27B
LMArena Math13901453
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)36.1%—
FrontierMath Tier 44.9%—
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202581.7%—
ProofBench—16%
Omni-MATH72%—
MATH Level 597.8%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)24.8%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)6.3%—

Knowledge o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 43.5 (#83), Qwen3.8 27B: 40.9 (#105)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3.8 27B
LMArena Expert13441482
GPQA Diamond79.6%—
Humanity's Last Exam18.1%—
SimpleQA Verified19.6%—
MMLU-Pro82%—
Confabulations15.8%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate18.6%—
GPQA (HELM)73.5%—

Multimodal Too close to call

o4-mini: 39.5 (#46), Qwen3.8 27B: 40.5 (#36)

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3.8 27B
LMArena Vision11941270
GeoBench64%—
VPCT57.5%—

Multilingual Qwen3.8 27B leads

o4-mini: 47.2 (#149), Qwen3.8 27B: 54.0 (#54)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3.8 27B
LMArena Non-English13361431
LMArena Chinese13551504
LMArena French13621468
LMArena German13361435
LMArena Japanese13081392
LMArena Korean13131389
LMArena Russian13341421
LMArena Spanish13461444

Instruction Following Too close to call

o4-mini: 75.4 (#63), Qwen3.8 27B: 75.8 (#54)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3.8 27B
LMArena Instruction Following13211436
IFEval92.8%—

Long Context o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 45.5 (#31), Qwen3.8 27B: 44.3 (#66)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3.8 27B
LMArena Longer Query13151448
Fiction.LiveBench77.8%—

Writing & Preference Qwen3.8 27B leads

o4-mini: 54.2 (#148), Qwen3.8 27B: 65.9 (#41)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3.8 27B
LMArena Text13531441
LMArena Creative Writing12941382
LMArena Multi-Turn13501443
Short-Story Creative Writing75%—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing—1671
WildBench85.4%—

Frequently asked questions

Is o4-mini better than Qwen3.8 27B?

Qwen3.8 27B is the stronger model overall, scoring 45.3 to 41.6 on the Noometry Index.

Which is cheaper, o4-mini or Qwen3.8 27B?

Qwen3.8 27B is cheaper. It lists at $0.99 per million input tokens and $1.49 per million output tokens; o4-mini lists at $1.10 and $4.40.

Is o4-mini or Qwen3.8 27B better for coding?

Qwen3.8 27B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 50.3 versus 41.6 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.8 27B does, with 262K tokens against 200K.

How many benchmarks do o4-mini and Qwen3.8 27B share?

22 benchmarks have published results for both models. o4-mini has 60 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.8 27B has 28.

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