Qwen2.5 32B Instruct vs Qwen2 72B Instruct
Qwen2.5 32B Instruct significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Updated for 2026
Which is better?
Qwen2.5 32B Instruct outperforms in 11 benchmarks (ARC-C, BBH, GPQA, GSM8k, HumanEval, MATH, MBPP, MMLU, MMLU-Pro, MultiPL-E, TruthfulQA), while Qwen2 72B Instruct is better at 3 benchmarks (HellaSwag, TheoremQA, Winogrande). Qwen2.5 32B Instruct significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.
Based on current benchmark, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.
Choose Qwen2.5 32B Instruct
- you want the strongest raw capability — it leads on 11 of 14 shared benchmarks
- you want the most recent training data — it shipped Sep 2024
Choose Qwen2 72B Instruct
- you are already invested in the Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team ecosystem
At a glance
The differences that matter most.
Performance Benchmarks
Comparative analysis across standard metrics
Qwen2.5 32B Instruct outperforms in 11 benchmarks (ARC-C, BBH, GPQA, GSM8k, HumanEval, MATH, MBPP, MMLU, MMLU-Pro, MultiPL-E, TruthfulQA), while Qwen2 72B Instruct is better at 3 benchmarks (HellaSwag, TheoremQA, Winogrande).
Qwen2.5 32B Instruct significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.
Arena Performance
Playground indexes and blind preference scores
Model Size
Parameter count comparison
Qwen2 72B Instruct has 39.5B more parameters than Qwen2.5 32B Instruct, making it 121.5% larger.
License
Usage and distribution terms
Qwen2.5 32B Instruct is licensed under Apache 2.0, while Qwen2 72B Instruct uses tongyi-qianwen.
License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.
Apache 2.0
Open weights
tongyi-qianwen
Open weights
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
Qwen2.5 32B Instruct was released on 2024-09-19, while Qwen2 72B Instruct was released on 2024-07-23.
Qwen2.5 32B Instruct is 2 months newer than Qwen2 72B Instruct.
Sep 19, 2024
1.9 years ago
1mo newerJul 23, 2024
2.1 years ago
Knowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.
Unable to compare the recency of their training data.
Outputs Comparison
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against Qwen2.5 32B Instruct and Qwen2 72B Instruct side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about Qwen2.5 32B Instruct vs Qwen2 72B Instruct.