Qwen2.5-72B vs Seed 1.6 Flash

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

Qwen2.5-72B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 64 to 56. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Qwen2.5-72B's sharpest advantage is in mathematics, where it averages 83.5 against 67.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Verified, 46 to 24. Seed 1.6 Flash does hit back in multimodal & grounded, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Seed 1.6 Flash 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. Seed 1.6 Flash gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 128K for Qwen2.5-72B.

Quick Verdict

Pick Qwen2.5-72B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Seed 1.6 Flash only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority or you need the larger 256K context window.

Agentic

Qwen2.5-72B

Qwen2.5-72B

57.7

Seed 1.6 Flash

54.5

56
Terminal-Bench 2.0
52
64
BrowseComp
62
55
OSWorld-Verified
52

Coding

Qwen2.5-72B

Qwen2.5-72B

43.8

Seed 1.6 Flash

27.6

75
HumanEval
59
46
SWE-bench Verified
24
40
LiveCodeBench
25
47
SWE-bench Pro
31

Multimodal & Grounded

Seed 1.6 Flash

Qwen2.5-72B

66.7

Seed 1.6 Flash

73.1

64
MMMU-Pro
74
70
OfficeQA Pro
72

Reasoning

Qwen2.5-72B

Qwen2.5-72B

75.8

Seed 1.6 Flash

66.8

80
SimpleQA
61
78
MuSR
59
81
BBH
75
72
LongBench v2
70
71
MRCRv2
74

Knowledge

Qwen2.5-72B

Qwen2.5-72B

59.8

Seed 1.6 Flash

47.3

83
MMLU
65
82
GPQA
64
80
SuperGPQA
62
78
OpenBookQA
60
75
MMLU-Pro
65
11
HLE
3
70
FrontierScience
57

Instruction Following

Qwen2.5-72B

Qwen2.5-72B

85

Seed 1.6 Flash

81

85
IFEval
81

Multilingual

Qwen2.5-72B

Qwen2.5-72B

80.8

Seed 1.6 Flash

72.8

84
MGSM
76
79
MMLU-ProX
71

Mathematics

Qwen2.5-72B

Qwen2.5-72B

83.5

Seed 1.6 Flash

67.1

84
AIME 2023
64
86
AIME 2024
66
85
AIME 2025
65
80
HMMT Feb 2023
60
82
HMMT Feb 2024
62
81
HMMT Feb 2025
61
83
BRUMO 2025
63
84
MATH-500
72

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Qwen2.5-72B or Seed 1.6 Flash?

Qwen2.5-72B is ahead overall, 64 to 56. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Verified, where the scores are 46 and 24.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Qwen2.5-72B or Seed 1.6 Flash?

Qwen2.5-72B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 59.8 versus 47.3. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Qwen2.5-72B or Seed 1.6 Flash?

Qwen2.5-72B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 43.8 versus 27.6. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Qwen2.5-72B or Seed 1.6 Flash?

Qwen2.5-72B has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 83.5 versus 67.1. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Qwen2.5-72B or Seed 1.6 Flash?

Qwen2.5-72B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 75.8 versus 66.8. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Qwen2.5-72B or Seed 1.6 Flash?

Qwen2.5-72B has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 57.7 versus 54.5. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Qwen2.5-72B or Seed 1.6 Flash?

Seed 1.6 Flash has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 73.1 versus 66.7. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Qwen2.5-72B or Seed 1.6 Flash?

Qwen2.5-72B has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 85 versus 81. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Qwen2.5-72B or Seed 1.6 Flash?

Qwen2.5-72B has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 80.8 versus 72.8. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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