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Qwen2 72B Instruct vs Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct leads the LLM Stats Score 10.8 to 6.0.

Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct leads the overall LLM Stats Score 10.8 to 6.0, ranking #251 overall.

The models split the 2 individual benchmarks reported for both models evenly.

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

Choose Qwen2 72B Instruct

  • you are already invested in the Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team ecosystem

Choose Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

  • overall performance matters — it scores 10.8 and ranks #251 on LLM Stats
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Sep 2025

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Qwen2 72B Instruct
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
6.0
#283
10.8
#251
Reasoning
5.8
#279
8.4
#263
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
1 of 2
1 of 2
Input price
— / M
$0.10 / M
Output price
— / M
$0.60 / M
Context window
—
262,144

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

3 shared
Index
Qwen2 72B Instruct
Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct
Math
11.3#238
8.2#253
Finance
8.3#151
9.6#143
Legal
6.4#141
8.6#132
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

17 reported for Qwen2 72B Instruct · 45 for Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

2 shared

Qwen2 72B Instruct outperforms in 1 benchmarks (MMLU), while Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct is better at 1 benchmark (MMLU-Pro).

Both models are evenly matched across the benchmarks.

Mon Sep 07 2026 • llm-stats.com

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Model Size

Parameter count comparison

68.0B diff

Qwen2 72B Instruct has 68.0B more parameters than Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct, making it 1700.0% larger.

Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen2 72B Instruct
72.0Bparameters
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct
4.0Bparameters
72.0B
Qwen2 72B Instruct
4.0B
Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Only Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct specifies input context (262,144 tokens). Only Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct specifies output context (262,144 tokens).

Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen2 72B Instruct
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct
Input262,144 tokens
Output262,144 tokens
Mon Sep 07 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct supports multimodal inputs, whereas Qwen2 72B Instruct does not.

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Qwen2 72B Instruct

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Qwen2 72B Instruct is licensed under tongyi-qianwen, while Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct uses Apache 2.0.

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

Qwen2 72B Instruct

tongyi-qianwen

Open weights

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Qwen2 72B Instruct was released on 2024-07-23, while Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct was released on 2025-09-22.

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct is 14 months newer than Qwen2 72B Instruct.

Qwen2 72B Instruct

Jul 23, 2024

2.1 years ago

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct

Sep 22, 2025

11 months ago

1.2yr 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?Start an Issue discussion→

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Qwen2 72B Instruct and Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Qwen2 72B Instruct
✓ Preferred
Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Qwen2 72B Instruct vs Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct.

Which is better, Qwen2 72B Instruct or Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct?

Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct leads the LLM Stats Score 10.8 to 6.0. Qwen2 72B Instruct is made by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team and Qwen3 VL 4B 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 Qwen2 72B Instruct compare to Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct in benchmarks?

Qwen2 72B Instruct scores GSM8k: 91.1%, CMMLU: 90.1%, HellaSwag: 87.6%, HumanEval: 86.0%, Winogrande: 85.1%. Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct scores DocVQAtest: 95.3%, ScreenSpot: 94.0%, OCRBench: 88.1%, MMBench-V1.1: 85.1%, AI2D: 84.1%.

What are the context window sizes for Qwen2 72B Instruct and Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct?

Qwen2 72B Instruct supports an unknown number of tokens and Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct supports 262K tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Qwen2 72B Instruct and Qwen3 VL 4B Instruct?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (6.0 vs 10.8), multimodal support (no vs yes), licensing (tongyi-qianwen vs Apache 2.0). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

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