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

Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 vs GPT-4.1 Mini

Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 21 results on 3 sources that measured both models.

Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507
Alibaba · profile
GPT-4.1 Mini
OpenAI · profile
Results compared
21
Shared sources
3

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

  • Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 is cheaper: $0.14 against $0.70 per million tokens, 4.9 times less.
  • GPT-4.1 Mini scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 10.2 against 7.5.
  • On our business benchmarks, Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 ranks higher for agents and tool use.
  • On our business benchmarks, GPT-4.1 Mini ranks higher for reasoning and knowledge and writing.

At a glance

Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507GPT-4.1 Mini
Price per million tokens$0.090 in · $0.30 out$0.40 in · $1.60 out
Blended (3 in : 1 out)$0.14$0.70
Cheapest host, blended$0.084 (StreamLake)$0.70 (Azure)
Intelligence Index7.510.2
Spring Prompt overall––
Output speed, tokens a second––
Context window262,144 tokens1,047,576 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 30B A3B Instruct 2507GPT-4.1 Mini
Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls 72 of 161 105 of 161
Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge 156 of 195 147 of 195
WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality 139 of 187 122 of 187
Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers not measured 144 of 153

Every shared result

BenchmarkMetricQwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507GPT-4.1 Mini
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedBusiness, management and financeArena rating 1,3971,379
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedCreative writingArena rating 1,3191,349
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedExpert promptsArena rating 1,3951,384
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedInstruction followingArena rating 1,3661,373
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedOverallArena rating 1,3831,383
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedWriting, literature and languageArena rating 1,3421,361
Artificial AnalysisreportedArtificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score 7.5010.2
Artificial AnalysisreportedGPQA Diamond% of questions 65.9%66.4%
Artificial AnalysisreportedHumanity's Last Exam% of questions 6.9%5.0%
Artificial AnalysisreportedIFBench% of instructions 33.1%38.3%
Artificial AnalysisreportedLong-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions 26.3%44.0%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTerminal-Bench Hard% of tasks 6.1%7.6%
Artificial AnalysisreportedΤ²-bench telecom% of tasks 10.2%52.9%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4reportedIrrelevance detection% correct 79.9%81.7%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4reportedMemory% correct 17.6%26.9%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4reportedMulti-turn tasks% correct 30.0%34.1%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4reportedOverall accuracy% correct 41.4%50.5%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4reportedRelevance detection% correct 93.8%87.5%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4reportedSingle-turn calls (curated)% correct 88.9%84.6%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4reportedSingle-turn calls (user-contributed)% correct 78.4%74.8%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4reportedWeb search% correct 22.5%57.0%

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 30B A3B Instruct 2507 better than GPT-4.1 Mini?

It depends on the task. Among models available today, on our benchmarks and licensed sources, Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 ranks higher for agents and tool use; GPT-4.1 Mini ranks higher for reasoning and knowledge and writing.

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

Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 costs $0.14 per million tokens (three input to one output), against $0.70 for GPT-4.1 Mini.

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

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