GPT-5 mini vs Qwen3-235B-A22B
Benchmarks, API pricing and specs, head to head. Data updated 2026-06-10.
OpenAI · Aug 2025
A fast, cheap distillation of GPT-5 for high-volume workloads — one fifth of the flagship's price with most of its everyday capability.
Alibaba (Qwen) · Jul 2025
The most popular open general-purpose Qwen: 235B MoE with hybrid thinking, a staple of the 2025 open-source ecosystem.
The verdict
GPT-5 mini and Qwen3-235B-A22B split the 2 benchmarks they share evenly (1–1), so capability alone won't settle this one. Qwen3-235B-A22B is about 1.8x cheaper per blended million tokens (3:1 input:output mix). GPT-5 mini also takes 400K of context versus 262K for Qwen3-235B-A22B. And Qwen3-235B-A22B is open-weights (Apache 2.0), so it can be self-hosted — a structural advantage if data control or vendor independence matters.
Benchmark head-to-head 1–1
Specs & pricing
| GPT-5 mini | Qwen3-235B-A22B | |
|---|---|---|
| modhub Index | — | 69.0 |
| Input price / 1M | $0.25 | $0.22 |
| Output price / 1M | $2 | $0.88 |
| Context window | 400K | 262K |
| Max output | 128K | 33K |
| Open weights | no | yes (Apache 2.0) |
| Reasoning model | yes | yes |
| Multimodal input | text, image | text |
| Knowledge cutoff | May 2024 | Apr 2025 |
| Released | Aug 2025 | Jul 2025 |
| Example monthly cost* | $5.50 | $3.52 |
* 10M input + 1.5M output tokens per month at list prices, no caching. Green = better value on that row.
Frequently asked questions
- Which is better, GPT-5 mini or Qwen3-235B-A22B?
- GPT-5 mini and Qwen3-235B-A22B split the 2 benchmarks they share evenly (1–1), so capability alone won't settle this one. Qwen3-235B-A22B is about 1.8x cheaper per blended million tokens (3:1 input:output mix). GPT-5 mini also takes 400K of context versus 262K for Qwen3-235B-A22B. And Qwen3-235B-A22B is open-weights (Apache 2.0), so it can be self-hosted — a structural advantage if data control or vendor independence matters.
- Which is cheaper, GPT-5 mini or Qwen3-235B-A22B?
- GPT-5 mini costs $0.25/$2 per million input/output tokens, while Qwen3-235B-A22B costs $0.22/$0.88. For a typical workload of 10M input and 1.5M output tokens per month, that's $5.50 versus $3.52.
- Which model is better for coding, GPT-5 mini or Qwen3-235B-A22B?
- We don't yet track SWE-bench Verified results for both models; check their individual pages for coding-related scores.