Compare / Qwen3 235B A22B vs GPT-5

Qwen3 235B A22B vs GPT-5

Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 15 results on 3 sources that measured both models.

Qwen3 235B A22B
Alibaba · profile
GPT-5
OpenAI · profile
Results compared
15
Shared sources
3

Qwen3 235B A22B or GPT-5? The short answer

  • Qwen3 235B A22B is cheaper: $0.80 against $3.44 per million tokens, 4.3 times less.
  • GPT-5 scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 23.0 against 9.5.
  • On our business benchmarks, Qwen3 235B A22B ranks higher for sticking to the facts.
  • On our business benchmarks, GPT-5 ranks higher for reasoning and knowledge and writing.

At a glance

Qwen3 235B A22BGPT-5
Price per million tokens$0.46 in · $1.82 out$1.25 in · $10.00 out
Blended (3 in : 1 out)$0.80$3.44
Cheapest host, blended–$3.44 (Azure)
Intelligence Index9.523.0
Spring Prompt overall––
Output speed, tokens a second––
Context window131,072 tokens400,000 tokens
WeightsOpenClosed
Developer based inChinathe US

Prices are the developer's list price where we have read it, otherwise the typical host on OpenRouter; see every model's price. Intelligence and speed from Artificial Analysis.

Which is better for what

Each model's rank among models available today, for each kind of work, from our own benchmarks and licensed sources. The better rank is in green.

Use caseQwen3 235B A22BGPT-5
Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls not measured 75 of 161
Professional workReal tasks from banking, consulting and law, business documents and freelance projects not measured 44 of 51
Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge 137 of 195 72 of 195
WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality 102 of 187 67 of 187
Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers 64 of 153 100 of 153

Every shared result

BenchmarkMetricQwen3 235B A22BGPT-5
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedBusiness, management and financeArena rating 1,4141,413
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedCreative writingArena rating 1,3661,373
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedExpert promptsArena rating 1,3951,460
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedInstruction followingArena rating 1,3811,410
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedOverallArena rating 1,4031,435
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedWriting, literature and languageArena rating 1,3781,397
Artificial AnalysisreportedArtificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score 9.5023.0
Artificial AnalysisreportedGPQA Diamond% of questions 70.0%85.4%
Artificial AnalysisreportedHumanity's Last Exam% of questions 11.0%28.5%
Artificial AnalysisreportedIFBench% of instructions 38.7%73.1%
Artificial AnalysisreportedLong-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions 0.0%78.2%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTerminal-Bench Hard% of tasks 6.1%37.9%
Artificial AnalysisreportedΤ²-bench telecom% of tasks 27.2%86.5%
Vectara Hallucination LeaderboardreportedAnswer rate% of documents 94.9%99.9%
Vectara Hallucination LeaderboardreportedHallucination rate% of summaries 9.3%14.7%

Bold green marks the better value on that metric. Where a source reports ranges that overlap, the difference may not be meaningful; see the benchmark page for ranges.

Quick answers

Is Qwen3 235B A22B better than GPT-5?

It depends on the task. Among models available today, on our benchmarks and licensed sources, Qwen3 235B A22B ranks higher for sticking to the facts; GPT-5 ranks higher for reasoning and knowledge and writing.

Which is cheaper, Qwen3 235B A22B or GPT-5?

Qwen3 235B A22B costs $0.80 per million tokens (three input to one output), against $3.44 for GPT-5.

Run Qwen3 235B A22B and GPT-5 on your own prompt

Benchmarks aren't your data. Try both side by side in the playground, with the cost of every answer.