OpenAI o4-mini vs Qwen 2.5 72B
Performance benchmarks + pricing comparison — updated April 2026
OpenAI o4-mini
OpenAIUpdated mini reasoning model. Similar pricing to o3-mini with updated capabilities.
| Input | $1.10/M |
| Output | $4.40/M |
| Context | 200K tokens |
| Best For | General reasoning, coding tasks |
| Benchmark | 72/100 |
Qwen 2.5 72B
QwenQwen's open-weight 72B model. Strong Chinese and English performance at competitive pricing.
| Input | $0.400/M |
| Output | $0.800/M |
| Context | 128K tokens |
| Best For | Chinese-English applications, code generation, open-source preference |
Cost Comparison by Scenario
Estimated cost per project with 30% cache hit rate. Actual costs may vary based on usage patterns.
| Scenario | OpenAI o4-mini | Qwen 2.5 72B | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small Script (1K lines) | $0.17 | $0.04 | Qwen 2.5 72B saves $0.13 (78%) |
| Medium Feature (10K lines) | $1.27 | $0.30 | Qwen 2.5 72B saves $0.97 (76%) |
| Large Project (50K lines) | $6.33 | $1.50 | Qwen 2.5 72B saves $4.83 (76%) |
| Code Review (5K lines) | $0.30 | $0.09 | Qwen 2.5 72B saves $0.21 (70%) |
Verdict
Qwen 2.5 72B wins on both price and performance — $0.400/M input with a benchmark score of N/A/100.
For most developers, this is the clear choice between these two models.
Compare with Other Models
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Claude 3.5 Haiku
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