Gemma 4 31B vs Qwen2.5-72B

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.

Agentic
Coding
Multimodal & Grounded
Reasoning
Knowledge
Instruction Following
Multilingual
Mathematics

Gemma 4 31B· Qwen2.5-72B

Quick Verdict

Pick Gemma 4 31B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Qwen2.5-72B only becomes the better choice if reasoning is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Gemma 4 31B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 73 to 60. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Gemma 4 31B's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 80 against 44.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is LiveCodeBench, 80% to 40%. Qwen2.5-72B does hit back in reasoning, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Gemma 4 31B is the reasoning model in the pair, while Qwen2.5-72B is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. Gemma 4 31B gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 128K for Qwen2.5-72B.

Operational tradeoffs

PriceFree*Free*
SpeedN/AN/A
TTFTN/AN/A
Context256K128K

Decision framing

BenchLM keeps the benchmark table and the operator tradeoffs on the same page so a better score does not hide a materially slower, pricier, or smaller-context model.

Runtime metrics show N/A when BenchLM does not have a sourced snapshot for that exact model. The scoring rules and freshness policy are documented on the methodology page.

BenchmarkGemma 4 31BQwen2.5-72B
Agentic
Terminal-Bench 2.056%
BrowseComp64%
OSWorld-Verified55%
CodingGemma 4 31B wins
LiveCodeBench80%40%
HumanEval75%
SWE-bench Verified46%
SWE-bench Pro47%
Multimodal & GroundedGemma 4 31B wins
MMMU-Pro76.9%64%
OfficeQA Pro70%
ReasoningQwen2.5-72B wins
BBH74.4%81%
MRCRv266.4%71%
MuSR78%
LongBench v272%
KnowledgeQwen2.5-72B wins
GPQA84.3%82%
MMLU-Pro85.2%75%
HLE26.5%11%
HLE w/o tools19.5%
MMLU83%
SuperGPQA80%
FrontierScience70%
SimpleQA80%
Instruction Following
IFEval85%
Multilingual
MGSM84%
MMLU-ProX79%
Mathematics
AIME 202384%
AIME 202486%
AIME 202585%
HMMT Feb 202380%
HMMT Feb 202482%
HMMT Feb 202581%
BRUMO 202583%
MATH-50084%
Frequently Asked Questions (5)

Which is better, Gemma 4 31B or Qwen2.5-72B?

Gemma 4 31B is ahead overall, 73 to 60. The biggest single separator in this matchup is LiveCodeBench, where the scores are 80% and 40%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Gemma 4 31B or Qwen2.5-72B?

Qwen2.5-72B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 61.5 versus 61.3. Inside this category, HLE is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Gemma 4 31B or Qwen2.5-72B?

Gemma 4 31B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 80 versus 44.1. Inside this category, LiveCodeBench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Gemma 4 31B or Qwen2.5-72B?

Qwen2.5-72B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 73.3 versus 66.4. Inside this category, BBH is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Gemma 4 31B or Qwen2.5-72B?

Gemma 4 31B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 76.9 versus 66.7. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: April 2, 2026

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