Is Phi-3.5 Medium or Qwen2.5-7B 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 Qwen2.5-7B ship a 128K-token context window.

Is Phi-3.5 Medium or Qwen2.5-7B better for coding?

Both Phi-3.5 Medium and Qwen2.5-7B 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; Qwen2.5-7B under Apache-2.0.

When were Phi-3.5 Medium and Qwen2.5-7B released?

Phi-3.5 Medium was released by Microsoft on 2024-08-20. Qwen2.5-7B was released by Alibaba on 2024-09-19.

Is Phi-3.5 Medium or Qwen2.5-7B 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 Qwen2.5-7B ship a 128K-token context window.

Is Phi-3.5 Medium or Qwen2.5-7B better for coding?

Both Phi-3.5 Medium and Qwen2.5-7B 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; Qwen2.5-7B under Apache-2.0.

When were Phi-3.5 Medium and Qwen2.5-7B released?

Phi-3.5 Medium was released by Microsoft on 2024-08-20. Qwen2.5-7B was released by Alibaba on 2024-09-19.

Phi-3.5 Medium vs Qwen2.5-7B

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

UpdatedApr 30, 2026

Phi-3.5 Medium specs · Qwen2.5-7B specs

Verdict by category

PriceTie
Neither model publishes per-token API pricing.
Context windowTie
Both ship a 128K-token context window.
BenchmarksTie
No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores.
ModalitiesTie
Both handle text.
OpennessTie
Both ship open weights, self-host either one.

It's a genuine coin-flip between Phi-3.5 Medium and Qwen2.5-7B: 0 category wins each, with the rest tied. Neither model publishes per-token API pricing. Both ship a 128K-token context window.

No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores. 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.

Qwen2.5-7B 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 Qwen2.5-7B sees more deployments in local llm and on device. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.

Side-by-side specs

Spec	Phi-3.5 Medium	Qwen2.5-7B
Provider	Microsoft	Alibaba
Released	Aug 2024	Sep 2024
Modalities	text	text
Context window	128K tokens	128K tokens
Max output	,	,
Input · 1M	Pricing not published	Pricing not published
Output · 1M	Pricing not published	Pricing not published
Knowledge cutoff	,	,
Open weights	Yes (MIT)	Yes (Apache-2.0)
API available	Yes	Yes

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.

Input tokens / dayOutput tokens / dayHorizon

Phi-3.5 MediumPricing unavailable
Qwen2.5-7BPricing 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 MediumQwen2.5-7B

MMLU78.9

Pick Phi-3.5 Medium if

Phi-3.5 Medium fits when…

MIT license
128k context
Strong reasoning at 14B

Pick Qwen2.5-7B if

Qwen2.5-7B fits when…

Apache-2.0
Runs on laptops
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 specs Phi-3.5 Medium vs Phi-4 Qwen2.5-7B vs Phi-4

Frequently asked

Is Phi-3.5 Medium or Qwen2.5-7B 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 Qwen2.5-7B ship a 128K-token context window.
Is Phi-3.5 Medium or Qwen2.5-7B better for coding?
Both Phi-3.5 Medium and Qwen2.5-7B 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; Qwen2.5-7B under Apache-2.0.
When were Phi-3.5 Medium and Qwen2.5-7B released?
Phi-3.5 Medium was released by Microsoft on 2024-08-20. Qwen2.5-7B was released by Alibaba on 2024-09-19.

Friday digest

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