Compare / Qwen3 8B vs GPT-5 Nano

Qwen3 8B vs GPT-5 Nano

Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 17 results on 3 sources that measured both models.

Qwen3 8B
Alibaba · profile
GPT-5 Nano
OpenAI · profile
Results compared
17
Shared sources
3

Qwen3 8B or GPT-5 Nano? The short answer

  • GPT-5 Nano is cheaper: $0.14 against $0.20 per million tokens, 32% less.
  • GPT-5 Nano scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 13.0 against 7.3.
  • On our business benchmarks, Qwen3 8B ranks higher for sticking to the facts.
  • On our business benchmarks, GPT-5 Nano ranks higher for agents and tool use, reasoning and knowledge and writing.

At a glance

Qwen3 8BGPT-5 Nano
Price per million tokens$0.12 in · $0.46 out$0.050 in · $0.40 out
Blended (3 in : 1 out)$0.20$0.14
Cheapest host, blended–$0.069 (OpenAI)
Intelligence Index7.313.0
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 8BGPT-5 Nano
Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls 126 of 161 50 of 161
Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge 166 of 195 131 of 195
WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality 158 of 187 150 of 187
Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers 7 of 153 127 of 153

Every shared result

BenchmarkMetricQwen3 8BGPT-5 Nano
Artificial AnalysisreportedArtificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score 7.3013.0
Artificial AnalysisreportedGPQA Diamond% of questions 58.9%67.6%
Artificial AnalysisreportedHumanity's Last Exam% of questions 3.9%9.5%
Artificial AnalysisreportedIFBench% of instructions 33.5%67.6%
Artificial AnalysisreportedLong-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions 0.0%45.0%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTerminal-Bench Hard% of tasks 2.3%17.4%
Artificial AnalysisreportedΤ²-bench telecom% of tasks 27.8%36.5%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4reportedIrrelevance detection% correct 82.3%89.1%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4reportedMemory% correct 14.6%24.7%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4reportedMulti-turn tasks% correct 41.8%34.5%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4reportedOverall accuracy% correct 42.6%51.5%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4reportedRelevance detection% correct 93.8%93.8%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4reportedSingle-turn calls (curated)% correct 88.6%80.8%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4reportedSingle-turn calls (user-contributed)% correct 80.5%70.7%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4reportedWeb search% correct 13.5%72.5%
Vectara Hallucination LeaderboardreportedAnswer rate% of documents 99.9%100.0%
Vectara Hallucination LeaderboardreportedHallucination rate% of summaries 4.8%10.5%

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 8B better than GPT-5 Nano?

It depends on the task. Among models available today, on our benchmarks and licensed sources, Qwen3 8B ranks higher for sticking to the facts; GPT-5 Nano ranks higher for agents and tool use, reasoning and knowledge and writing.

Which is cheaper, Qwen3 8B or GPT-5 Nano?

GPT-5 Nano costs $0.14 per million tokens (three input to one output), against $0.20 for Qwen3 8B.

Run Qwen3 8B and GPT-5 Nano on your own prompt

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