Phi 4 Reasoning vs Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
Phi 4 Reasoning and Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct are closely matched at 12.3 and 16.5 on the LLM Stats Score.
Microsoft · Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Updated for 2026
Which is better?
Phi 4 Reasoning and Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct are closely matched on the overall LLM Stats Score at 12.3 and 16.5.
In the 4 individual benchmarks reported for both models, Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct wins 4; 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 are already invested in the Microsoft ecosystem
Choose Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
- you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 4 of 4 exact shared results
- you want the most recent training data — it shipped Sep 2025
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 · 50 for Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
Phi 4 Reasoning outperforms in 0 benchmarks, while Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct is better at 4 benchmarks (AIME 2025, GPQA, IFEval, MMLU-Pro).
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.
Human preference
Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores
Model Size
Parameter count comparison
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct has 17.0B more parameters than Phi 4 Reasoning, making it 121.4% larger.
Context Window
Maximum input and output token capacity
Only Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct specifies input context (131,072 tokens). Only Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct specifies output context (32,768 tokens).
Input capabilities
Documented input modalities across available providers
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct supports multimodal inputs, whereas Phi 4 Reasoning does not.
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.
Phi 4 Reasoning
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
License
Usage and distribution terms
Phi 4 Reasoning is licensed under MIT, while Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct uses Apache 2.0.
License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.
MIT
Open weights
Apache 2.0
Open weights
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
Phi 4 Reasoning was released on 2025-04-30, while Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct was released on 2025-09-22.
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct is 5 months newer than Phi 4 Reasoning.
Apr 30, 2025
1.4 years ago
Sep 22, 2025
11 months ago
4mo newerKnowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
Phi 4 Reasoning has a documented knowledge cutoff of 2025-03-01, while Qwen3 VL 30B A3B 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 Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct's cutoff date.
Mar 2025
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Outputs Comparison
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against Phi 4 Reasoning and Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about Phi 4 Reasoning vs Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct.