LLM·Dex
Newsletter

Phi-3.5 Medium vs Qwen2.5-72B

A complete head-to-head: pricing, context window, benchmarks, modality coverage, and openness, with a programmatic verdict synthesized from the underlying data.

Updated

Phi-3.5 Medium specs · Qwen2.5-72B specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceTie

    Neither model publishes per-token API pricing.

  • Context windowTie

    Both ship a 128K-token context window.

  • BenchmarksQwen2.5-72B

    Qwen2.5-72B leads in 1 of 1 shared benchmarks; the biggest gap is on MMLU (broad academic knowledge), where it scores 86.0 vs 78.9.

  • ModalitiesTie

    Both handle text.

  • OpennessTie

    Both ship open weights, self-host either one.

On balance Qwen2.5-72B edges ahead, winning 1 of 5 categories against Phi-3.5 Medium's 0. Neither model publishes per-token API pricing. Both ship a 128K-token context window.

Qwen2.5-72B leads in 1 of 1 shared benchmarks; the biggest gap is on MMLU (broad academic knowledge), where it scores 86.0 vs 78.9. Both target the same set of modalities (text), so the deciding factors are price, context, and raw quality. Both ship open weights, self-host either one.

Qwen2.5-72B is the newer of the two, released 1 months after Phi-3.5 Medium, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Phi-3.5 Medium is usually picked for on device and edge deployment workloads, while Qwen2.5-72B sees more deployments in open source llm and commercial use llm. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.

Side-by-side specs

SpecPhi-3.5 MediumQwen2.5-72B
ProviderMicrosoftAlibaba
ReleasedAug 2024Sep 2024
Modalitiestexttext
Context window128K tokens128K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1MPricing not publishedPricing not published
Output · 1MPricing not publishedPricing not published
Knowledge cutoff,,
Open weightsYes (MIT)Yes (Apache-2.0)
API availableYesYes

Pricing at scale

What you'd actually pay at typical workloads. Numbers come from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day, vs ,
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day, vs ,
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day, vs ,

Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates).

Price calculator

Estimated spend for the listed models at your usage. Numbers are derived from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Phi-3.5 MediumPricing unavailable
  • Qwen2.5-72BPricing unavailable

Benchmarks compared

Only sourced numbers. Where a benchmark is missing for one model we show the available value rather than fabricating the other.

Phi-3.5 MediumQwen2.5-72B
  • MMLU78.986.0
Pick Phi-3.5 Medium if

Phi-3.5 Medium fits when…

  • MIT license
  • 128k context
  • Strong reasoning at 14B
Pick Qwen2.5-72B if

Qwen2.5-72B fits when…

  • Mature deployment
  • Apache-2.0
  • Strong multilingual
Don't want either?

Consider Phi-4

Microsoft's 14B model, exceptional quality-per-parameter via curated synthetic training data.

See Phi-4 specsPhi-3.5 Medium vs Phi-4Qwen2.5-72B vs Phi-4

Frequently asked

  • Is Phi-3.5 Medium or Qwen2.5-72B cheaper?
    Per-token pricing isn't published for at least one of these models, check each model's spec page for current rates.
  • Which has the larger context window?
    Both Phi-3.5 Medium and Qwen2.5-72B ship a 128K-token context window.
  • Is Phi-3.5 Medium or Qwen2.5-72B better for coding?
    Both Phi-3.5 Medium and Qwen2.5-72B are competitive on coding benchmarks. See each model's individual spec page for HumanEval and SWE-bench scores where published. For an opinionated pick, consult our Best LLM for Coding ranking.
  • Are either of these models open source?
    Both ship with open weights. Phi-3.5 Medium is licensed under MIT; Qwen2.5-72B under Apache-2.0.
  • When were Phi-3.5 Medium and Qwen2.5-72B released?
    Phi-3.5 Medium was released by Microsoft on 2024-08-20. Qwen2.5-72B was released by Alibaba on 2024-09-19.
Friday digest

The week's AI launches, in your inbox.

One short email every Friday, new models, leaks, and quietly-shipped APIs you missed.