Qwen2.5-72B vs GPT-5 nano

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

Qwen2.5-72B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 72 to 31. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

GPT-5 nano 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. GPT-5 nano gives you the larger context window at 400K, compared with 128K for Qwen2.5-72B.

Quick Verdict

Pick Qwen2.5-72B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. GPT-5 nano only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you need the larger 400K context window.

Knowledge

GPT-5 nano

Qwen2.5-72B

68.2

GPT-5 nano

71.2

83
MMLU
-
82
GPQA
71.2
80
SuperGPQA
-
78
OpenBookQA
-
75
MMLU-Pro
-
11
HLE
-

Coding

Qwen2.5-72B
75
HumanEval
-
46
SWE-bench Verified
-
40
LiveCodeBench
-

Mathematics

GPT-5 nano

Qwen2.5-72B

83.1

GPT-5 nano

85.2

84
AIME 2023
-
86
AIME 2024
-
85
AIME 2025
85.2
80
HMMT Feb 2023
-
82
HMMT Feb 2024
-
81
HMMT Feb 2025
-
83
BRUMO 2025
-
84
MATH-500
-

Reasoning

Qwen2.5-72B
80
SimpleQA
-
78
MuSR
-
81
BBH
-

Instruction Following

Qwen2.5-72B
85
IFEval
-

Multilingual

Qwen2.5-72B
84
MGSM
-

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Qwen2.5-72B or GPT-5 nano?

Qwen2.5-72B is ahead overall, 72 to 31. The biggest single separator in this matchup is GPQA, where the scores are 82 and 71.2.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Qwen2.5-72B or GPT-5 nano?

GPT-5 nano has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 71.2 versus 68.2. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Qwen2.5-72B or GPT-5 nano?

GPT-5 nano has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 85.2 versus 83.1. Inside this category, AIME 2025 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 9, 2026

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