The AI arena is free today

Open Superagent

Phi-3.5-mini-instruct vs Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct

Phi-3.5-mini-instruct and Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct are closely matched at -3.8 and -3.2 on the LLM Stats Score.

Microsoft · Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Phi-3.5-mini-instruct and Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct are closely matched on the overall LLM Stats Score at -3.8 and -3.2.

In the 10 individual benchmarks reported for both models, Phi-3.5-mini-instruct wins 6; this is a narrower head-to-head signal than the composite indexes.

Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.

Choose Phi-3.5-mini-instruct

  • you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 6 of 10 exact shared results

Choose Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct

  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Sep 2024

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Phi-3.5-mini-instruct
Microsoft
Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
-3.8
#362
-3.2
#359
Reasoning
-4.7
#358
-3.2
#351
Coding
-6.9
#276
6.4
#203
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
6 of 10
4 of 10
Input price
$0.10 / M
— / M
Output price
$0.10 / M
— / M
Context window
128,000
—

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

3 shared
Index
Phi-3.5-mini-instruct
Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct
Math
-1.5#310
-2.4#316
Finance
0.6#198
-5.9#221
Legal
0.6#186
-7.2#206
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

31 reported for Phi-3.5-mini-instruct · 19 for Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct

10 shared

Phi-3.5-mini-instruct outperforms in 6 benchmarks (ARC-C, GSM8k, MATH, MMLU, MMLU-Pro, TruthfulQA), while Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct is better at 4 benchmarks (HellaSwag, HumanEval, MBPP, Winogrande).

Phi-3.5-mini-instruct has a slight edge in benchmark performance.

Thu Oct 15 2026 • llm-stats.com

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Model Size

Parameter count comparison

3.2B diff

Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct has 3.2B more parameters than Phi-3.5-mini-instruct, making it 84.2% larger.

Microsoft
Phi-3.5-mini-instruct
3.8Bparameters
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct
7.0Bparameters
3.8B
Phi-3.5-mini-instruct
7.0B
Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Only Phi-3.5-mini-instruct specifies input context (128,000 tokens). Only Phi-3.5-mini-instruct specifies output context (128,000 tokens).

Microsoft
Phi-3.5-mini-instruct
Input128,000 tokens
Output128,000 tokens
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Thu Oct 15 2026 • llm-stats.com

License

Usage and distribution terms

Phi-3.5-mini-instruct is licensed under MIT, while Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct uses Apache 2.0.

License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.

Phi-3.5-mini-instruct

MIT

Open weights

Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Phi-3.5-mini-instruct was released on 2024-08-23, while Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct was released on 2024-09-19.

Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct is 1 month newer than Phi-3.5-mini-instruct.

Phi-3.5-mini-instruct

Aug 23, 2024

2.1 years ago

Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct

Sep 19, 2024

2.1 years ago

3w newer

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.

Unable to compare the recency of their training data.

No cutoff dates available

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Phi-3.5-mini-instruct and Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Phi-3.5-mini-instruct
✓ Preferred
Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Phi-3.5-mini-instruct vs Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct.

Which is better, Phi-3.5-mini-instruct or Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct?

Phi-3.5-mini-instruct and Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct are closely matched on the LLM Stats Score at -3.8 and -3.2. Phi-3.5-mini-instruct is made by Microsoft and Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct is made by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

How does Phi-3.5-mini-instruct compare to Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct in benchmarks?

Phi-3.5-mini-instruct scores GSM8k: 86.2%, ARC-C: 84.6%, RULER: 84.1%, PIQA: 81.0%, OpenBookQA: 79.2%. Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct scores HumanEval: 88.4%, GSM8k: 83.9%, MBPP: 83.5%, HellaSwag: 76.8%, Winogrande: 72.9%.

What are the context window sizes for Phi-3.5-mini-instruct and Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct?

Phi-3.5-mini-instruct supports 128K tokens and Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct supports an unknown number of tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Phi-3.5-mini-instruct and Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (-3.8 vs -3.2), licensing (MIT vs Apache 2.0). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Phi-3.5-mini-instruct and Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct?

Phi-3.5-mini-instruct is developed by Microsoft and Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct is developed by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team.

Related comparisons