Phi 4 Reasoning vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
Phi 4 Reasoning and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct are closely matched at 12.3 and 12.5 on the LLM Stats Score.
Microsoft · Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Updated for 2026
Which is better?
Phi 4 Reasoning and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct are closely matched on the overall LLM Stats Score at 12.3 and 12.5.
In the 5 individual benchmarks reported for both models, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct wins 3; 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 4 Reasoning
- you want the most recent training data — it shipped Apr 2025
Choose Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
- you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 3 of 5 exact shared results
At a glance
The differences that matter most.
Capability indexes
Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks
Individual benchmarks
11 reported for Phi 4 Reasoning · 14 for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
Phi 4 Reasoning outperforms in 2 benchmarks (GPQA, MMLU-Pro), while Qwen2.5 72B Instruct is better at 3 benchmarks (Arena Hard, IFEval, LiveCodeBench).
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has a slight edge in benchmark performance.
Human preference
Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores
Model Size
Parameter count comparison
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has 58.7B more parameters than Phi 4 Reasoning, making it 419.3% larger.
Context Window
Maximum input and output token capacity
Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct specifies input context (131,072 tokens). Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct specifies output context (8,192 tokens).
License
Usage and distribution terms
Phi 4 Reasoning is licensed under MIT, while Qwen2.5 72B Instruct uses Qwen.
License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.
MIT
Open weights
Qwen
Open weights
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
Phi 4 Reasoning was released on 2025-04-30, while Qwen2.5 72B Instruct was released on 2024-09-19.
Phi 4 Reasoning is 7 months newer than Qwen2.5 72B Instruct.
Apr 30, 2025
1.3 years ago
7mo newerSep 19, 2024
2.0 years ago
Knowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
Phi 4 Reasoning has a documented knowledge cutoff of 2025-03-01, while Qwen2.5 72B Instruct's cutoff date is not specified.
We can confirm Phi 4 Reasoning's training data extends to 2025-03-01, but cannot make a direct comparison without Qwen2.5 72B Instruct's cutoff date.
Mar 2025
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Outputs Comparison
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against Phi 4 Reasoning and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about Phi 4 Reasoning vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct.