Compare / Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507 vs GPT-4.1

Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507 vs GPT-4.1

Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 24 results on 4 sources that measured both models.

AlibabaQwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507 Released 29 Jul 2025 · $0.090 in · $0.30 out
OpenAIGPT-4.1 Released 14 Apr 2025 · $2.00 in · $8.00 out
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507 wins 21 too close to callGPT-4.1 wins 21

Of the 24 results both models have, the better value on each. Results whose reported ranges overlap are too close to call.

Results as of 9 October 2026 (catalogue release 2026-10-09-dd620e778ac5). See also Alibaba vs OpenAI, every model from both labs.

Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507 or GPT-4.1? The short answer

Pick GPT-4.1 if quality matters most: it scores higher (Intelligence Index 12.7 against 7.5). Pick Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507 if cost matters more: it costs 25 times less per token.

  • Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507 is cheaper: $0.14 against $3.50 per million tokens, 25 times less.
  • GPT-4.1 scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 12.7 against 7.5.
  • Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507 is newer: released 29 Jul 2025, against 14 Apr 2025 for GPT-4.1.
  • On third-party benchmarks, on the results both models have: GPT-4.1 does better for agents and tool use, reasoning and knowledge and writing.

Head to head

7.5
Intelligence Index
12.7
$0.14
Price per million tokens, blendedlower is better
$3.50
262,144
Context window, tokens
1,047,576

Every fact side by side

Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507GPT-4.1
Price per million tokens$0.090 in · $0.30 out$2.00 in · $8.00 out
Blended (3 in : 1 out)$0.14$3.50
Cheapest host, blended$0.084 (StreamLake)$3.50 (Azure)
Intelligence Index7.512.7
Spring Prompt overall––
Output speed, tokens a second––
Context window262,144 tokens1,047,576 tokens
Released29 Jul 2025 (newer)14 Apr 2025
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 the models on sale today, for each kind of work, from our own benchmarks and licensed sources. Further right is better; the better rank is in green.

Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls 75 of 164 41 of 164
Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge 159 of 198 151 of 198
WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality 140 of 188 56 of 188
Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers not measured 93 of 152

Every shared result

Each model's best result on every measure both have, grouped by benchmark, with the setting that produced it. Under each measure, every model that benchmark has measured is a grey tick, best to the right, so you can see where the two sit in the field. The headline measures of each benchmark come first; the rest are under "Show all". Green marks the better value; where a source reports ranges that overlap, neither is marked.

MeasureQwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507GPT-4.1
Arena (formerly LMArena) reported by Arena (formerly LMArena) · 3 results
Overall · TextArena rating, higher is better 162 · 119 of 387 measured 1,383 1,415
Business, management and finance · TextArena rating, higher is better 144 · 115 of 380 measured 1,397 1,415
Creative writing · TextArena rating, higher is better 186 · 90 of 385 measured 1,319 1,403
Artificial Analysis reported by Artificial Analysis · 3 results
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score, higher is better 209 · 147 of 243 measured 7.5 12.7
GPQA Diamond% of questions, higher is better 172 · 169 of 231 measured 65.9% 66.6%
Humanity's Last Exam% of questions, higher is better 173 · 213 of 242 measured 6.9% 4.2%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4 reported by Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4 · 3 results
Overall accuracy · BFCL% correct, higher is better 32 · 17 of 81 measured 41.4%bfcl fc 54.0%bfcl fc
Irrelevance detection · BFCL% correct, higher is better 49 · 24 of 81 measured 79.9%bfcl fc 86.5%bfcl fc
Memory · BFCL% correct, higher is better 38 · 26 of 81 measured 17.6%bfcl fc 23.9%bfcl fc
UGI Leaderboard reported by UGI Leaderboard · 3 results
Writing score · UGIscore out of 100, higher is better 163 · 19 of 230 measured 27.9 67.5
Requested-length error · UGI% off the requested word count, lower is better 57 · 17 of 230 measured 13.0% 6.0%
Style adherence · UGIscore from 0 to 1, higher is better 187 · 159 of 230 measured 0.31 0.33
Show all 24 results (12 more)
MeasureQwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507GPT-4.1
Arena (formerly LMArena) reported by Arena (formerly LMArena) · 3 results
Expert prompts · TextArena rating, higher is better 163 · 147 of 338 measured 1,395 1,405
Instruction following · TextArena rating, higher is better 164 · 118 of 387 measured 1,367 1,403
Writing, literature and language · TextArena rating, higher is better 176 · 98 of 386 measured 1,342 1,405
Artificial Analysis reported by Artificial Analysis · 4 results
IFBench% of instructions, higher is better 168 · 122 of 195 measured 33.1% 43.0%
Long-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions, higher is better 191 · 118 of 233 measured 26.3% 68.3%
Terminal-Bench Hard% of tasks, higher is better 147 · 116 of 190 measured 6.1% 13.6%
τ²-bench telecom% of tasks, higher is better 185 · 105 of 193 measured 10.2% 47.1%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4 reported by Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4 · 5 results
Multi-turn tasks · BFCL% correct, higher is better 34 · 26 of 81 measured 30.0%bfcl fc 38.9%bfcl fc
Relevance detection · BFCL% correct, higher is better 8 · 1 of 81 measured 93.8%bfcl prompt 100.0%bfcl prompt
Single-turn calls (curated) · BFCL% correct, higher is better 9 · 11 of 81 measured 88.9%bfcl prompt 88.7%bfcl prompt
Single-turn calls (user-contributed) · BFCL% correct, higher is better 22 · 14 of 81 measured 78.4%bfcl prompt 78.9%bfcl prompt
Web search · BFCL% correct, higher is better 30 · 15 of 81 measured 22.5%bfcl fc 68.0%bfcl fc

Quick answers

Is Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507 better than GPT-4.1?

Pick GPT-4.1 if quality matters most: it scores higher (Intelligence Index 12.7 against 7.5). Pick Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507 if cost matters more: it costs 25 times less per token.

Which is cheaper, Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507 or GPT-4.1?

Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507 is cheaper: $0.14 against $3.50 per million tokens, 25 times less.

Which is better for agents and tool use, Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507 or GPT-4.1?

GPT-4.1 ranks 41 of 164 models on sale for multi-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls, against 75 for Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507.

Which is better for reasoning and knowledge, Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507 or GPT-4.1?

GPT-4.1 ranks 151 of 198 models on sale for hard questions across science, maths and general knowledge, against 159 for Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507.

Which is better for writing, Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507 or GPT-4.1?

GPT-4.1 ranks 56 of 188 models on sale for what people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality, against 140 for Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507.

Which has the bigger context window, Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507 or GPT-4.1?

GPT-4.1: 1,047,576 tokens, against 262,144 for Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507.

Run Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507 and GPT-4.1 on your own prompt

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