Pairwise benchmark snapshot · Aug 17, 2026

Grok 3 vs Qwen 2.5 Plus benchmark

Name: Grok 3 vs Qwen 2.5 Plus AI benchmark comparison
Creator: CompareLLM
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This page compares Grok 3 (xAI) and Qwen 2.5 Plus (Alibaba) using the latest snapshots we have as of Aug 17, 2026. On preference Elo, Qwen 2.5 Plus is ahead by 40 points (1,445 vs 1,405; lmarena (Aug 17, 2026)). On SWE-bench coding, Qwen 2.5 Plus resolves 59.2% versus 51.4% (swebench (Aug 17, 2026)). Qwen 2.5 Plus streams faster (110 tok/s) while Qwen 2.5 Plus is the cheaper output token ($1/1M). Grok 3 has the larger context window (131k tokens). Every cell below is a dated snapshot from a named public source — we do not invent missing scores, and we do not run SWE-bench ourselves.

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xAI

Grok 3

Previous xAI generation before Grok 4. Kept for grok 3 vs grok 4.

Elo 1,405$15/1M out

Alibaba

Qwen 2.5 Plus

Alibaba balanced flagship API model with high-throughput general reasoning.

Elo 1,445$1/1M out

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Model A

Model B

Quick vs:vs Claude Opus 4.5 vs Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Claude 3.7 Sonnet

Interactive Comparison Diagram

Matchup Breakdown

Tug-of-War Matchup Matrix

Category wins across intelligence, speed, and pricing efficiency.

Grok 3 (1)vsQwen 2.5 Plus (9)

Grok 3: 1W (10%)Overall: Qwen 2.5 PlusQwen 2.5 Plus: 9W (90%)

← Grok 3Qwen 2.5 Plus →

Qwen 2.5 Plus (5/5)

Intelligence & Reasoning

Preference Elo, Coding proficiency, SWE-bench & LiveBench accuracy

Preference Elo

1,405vs1,445

Coding Elo

—vs1,460

SWE-bench

51.4%vs59.2%

LiveBench

60.2%vs63.5%

GPQA Diamond

74.2%vs75.8%

Grok 3: 0WQwen 2.5 Plus: 5W

Qwen 2.5 Plus (2/2)

Speed & Latency

Generation throughput and time to first token responsiveness

Output speed

88 tok/svs110 tok/s

Time to first token

250 msvs180 ms

Grok 3: 0WQwen 2.5 Plus: 2W

Qwen 2.5 Plus (2/3)

Pricing & Capacity

Cost per million tokens and max context window length

Output price

$15/1Mvs$1/1M

Input price

$3/1Mvs$0.25/1M

Context window

131kvs128k

Grok 3: 1WQwen 2.5 Plus: 2W

Capability Matchup Radar

Multi-Dimensional Capability Radar

Each spoke is a skill. Farther from the center is better (0–100th percentile). Tap any dot to inspect details.

Tap any node to inspect

Percentile 0–100

Dimensional AdvantageQwen 2.5 Plus 5/6

Preference Elo

Qwen 2.5 Plus

40 pts advantage

Throughput Speed

Qwen 2.5 Plus

22 tok/s faster

Price Efficiency

Qwen 2.5 Plus

$14.00/1M cheaper

Full Benchmark Score Matrix

—

Elo

High is better

1,405

EloHigh is better

1,445+3%

Code Elo

High is better

—

Code EloHigh is better

1,460

LiveBench

High is better

60.2%

LiveBenchHigh is better

63.5%+5%

SWE-bench

High is better

51.4%

SWE-benchHigh is better

59.2%+15%

GPQA

High is better

74.2%

GPQAHigh is better

75.8%+2%

TTFT

Low is better

250 ms

TTFTLow is better

180 ms+39%

Speed

High is better

88 tok/s

SpeedHigh is better

110 tok/s+25%

In $

Low is better

$3/1M

In $Low is better

$0.25/1M+1100%

Out $

Low is better

$15/1M

Out $Low is better

$1/1M+1400%

Context

High is better

+2%131k

ContextHigh is better

128k

Interactive Simulator

Workload Cost & Savings Calculator

Simulate monthly production API costs based on published $/1M tokens.

Save up to 93% with Qwen 2.5 Plus

Monthly Volume50M tokens/mo

Quick Presets:

Token Ratio (In vs Out)70% In / 30% Out

RAG / Search (10% out)Coding / Chat (50% out)

Grok 3$330.00 / mo

In: $105.00Out: $225.00

Qwen 2.5 Plus$23.75 / mo

In: $8.75Out: $15.00

Estimated Cost Delta

Qwen 2.5 Plus is estimated to save $306.25/month ($3,675/year).

Based on 50M tokens (30% gen)

Key Selection Recommendations

1
Qwen 2.5 Plus:Pick Qwen 2.5 Plus when repo-level coding accuracy is the constraint.
2
Qwen 2.5 Plus:Pick Qwen 2.5 Plus when time-to-first-token matters more than peak Elo.
3
Qwen 2.5 Plus:Pick Qwen 2.5 Plus as the default general assistant.

Recommended Workload Routing

Repo / coding agentsQwen 2.5 Plus

Higher SWE-bench (59.2%).

High-volume chatQwen 2.5 Plus

Lower output list price ($1/1M).

Voice / low-latency UIQwen 2.5 Plus

Lower TTFT (180 ms).

Long-document RAGGrok 3

Larger window (131k).

Screenshots / visionQwen 2.5 Plus

Both accept images. Defaulting to the higher-Elo side (Qwen 2.5 Plus).

Target Workload	Recommended Pick	Evaluation Rationale
Repo / coding agents	Qwen 2.5 Plus	Higher SWE-bench (59.2%).
High-volume chat	Qwen 2.5 Plus	Lower output list price ($1/1M).
Voice / low-latency UI	Qwen 2.5 Plus	Lower TTFT (180 ms).
Long-document RAG	Grok 3	Larger window (131k).
Screenshots / vision	Qwen 2.5 Plus	Both accept images. Defaulting to the higher-Elo side (Qwen 2.5 Plus).

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LIVE

xAI

Grok 3

Elo 1,405

LiveBench60.2%

SWE-bench51.4%

Speed88 tok/s

Output cost$15/1M

Alibaba

Qwen 2.5 Plus

Elo 1,445

LiveBench63.5%

SWE-bench59.2%

Speed110 tok/s

Output cost$1/1M

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better overall, Grok 3 or Qwen 2.5 Plus?: Qwen 2.5 Plus has the higher preference Elo in our latest snapshot (1,445). “Better” still depends on coding, price, and latency — see the table.
Which is better at coding, Grok 3 or Qwen 2.5 Plus?: Qwen 2.5 Plus leads SWE-bench at 59.2% vs 51.4%. SWE-bench is one harness, not your repo.
Which is cheaper to run in production?: Qwen 2.5 Plus output tokens are $1/1M versus $15/1M. Input prices and retry rates still move the real bill.
Which is faster, Grok 3 or Qwen 2.5 Plus?: Qwen 2.5 Plus has the lower time-to-first-token (180 ms vs 250 ms). Tokens/sec is a separate column if you care about long completions.
Which has the larger context window?: Grok 3 accepts 131k tokens versus 128k.
Can I self-host either model?: Neither model is marked open-weights here. You are comparing hosted APIs.
Are these scores from CompareLLM’s own evals?: No. V1 aggregates public leaderboards (and optional first-party latency pings). Each cell names its source and date. Read /methodology.
What does preference Elo mean on this page?: Preference Elo is a crowd vote from LMArena / Arena. People see two hidden answers and pick the one they like more. The model that wins more often gets a higher Elo. That means people preferred it — not that it passed a school test. It is not SWE-bench, not accuracy, and not a number we invent. Grok 3 and Qwen 2.5 Plus Elo cells are dated snapshots from the named source — we do not compute Arena ourselves.

Similar Head-to-Head Comparisons

All Grok 3 matchups →|All Qwen 2.5 Plus matchups →

Grok 3 vs Grok 4 (next grok)Qwen 2.5 Plus vs Qwen2.5 Coder 32B Instruct (previous qwen)Qwen 2.5 Plus vs Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B (next qwen)Qwen 3 Max vs Qwen 2.5 Plus Grok 4.6 vs Qwen 2.5 Plus Qwen QwQ 32B vs Qwen 2.5 Plus

Grok 3 vs Qwen 2.5 Plus benchmark

Interactive Comparison Diagram

Matchup Breakdown

Tug-of-War Matchup Matrix

Category wins across intelligence, speed, and pricing efficiency.

Grok 3 (1)vsQwen 2.5 Plus (9)

Grok 3: 1W (10%)Overall: Qwen 2.5 PlusQwen 2.5 Plus: 9W (90%)

← Grok 3Qwen 2.5 Plus →

Qwen 2.5 Plus (5/5)

Intelligence & Reasoning

Preference Elo, Coding proficiency, SWE-bench & LiveBench accuracy

Preference Elo

1,405vs1,445

Coding Elo

—vs1,460

SWE-bench

51.4%vs59.2%

LiveBench

60.2%vs63.5%

GPQA Diamond

74.2%vs75.8%

Grok 3: 0WQwen 2.5 Plus: 5W

Qwen 2.5 Plus (2/2)

Speed & Latency

Generation throughput and time to first token responsiveness

Output speed

88 tok/svs110 tok/s

Time to first token

250 msvs180 ms

Grok 3: 0WQwen 2.5 Plus: 2W

Qwen 2.5 Plus (2/3)

Pricing & Capacity

Cost per million tokens and max context window length

Output price

$15/1Mvs$1/1M

Input price

$3/1Mvs$0.25/1M

Context window

131kvs128k

Grok 3: 1WQwen 2.5 Plus: 2W

Recommended Workload Routing

Repo / coding agentsQwen 2.5 Plus

Higher SWE-bench (59.2%).

High-volume chatQwen 2.5 Plus

Lower output list price ($1/1M).

Voice / low-latency UIQwen 2.5 Plus

Lower TTFT (180 ms).

Long-document RAGGrok 3

Larger window (131k).

Screenshots / visionQwen 2.5 Plus

Both accept images. Defaulting to the higher-Elo side (Qwen 2.5 Plus).

Target Workload	Recommended Pick	Evaluation Rationale
Repo / coding agents	Qwen 2.5 Plus	Higher SWE-bench (59.2%).
High-volume chat	Qwen 2.5 Plus	Lower output list price ($1/1M).
Voice / low-latency UI	Qwen 2.5 Plus	Lower TTFT (180 ms).
Long-document RAG	Grok 3	Larger window (131k).
Screenshots / vision	Qwen 2.5 Plus	Both accept images. Defaulting to the higher-Elo side (Qwen 2.5 Plus).

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better overall, Grok 3 or Qwen 2.5 Plus?

Qwen 2.5 Plus has the higher preference Elo in our latest snapshot (1,445). “Better” still depends on coding, price, and latency — see the table.

Which is better at coding, Grok 3 or Qwen 2.5 Plus?

Qwen 2.5 Plus leads SWE-bench at 59.2% vs 51.4%. SWE-bench is one harness, not your repo.

Which is cheaper to run in production?

Qwen 2.5 Plus output tokens are $1/1M versus $15/1M. Input prices and retry rates still move the real bill.

Which is faster, Grok 3 or Qwen 2.5 Plus?

Qwen 2.5 Plus has the lower time-to-first-token (180 ms vs 250 ms). Tokens/sec is a separate column if you care about long completions.

Which has the larger context window?

Grok 3 accepts 131k tokens versus 128k.

Can I self-host either model?

Neither model is marked open-weights here. You are comparing hosted APIs.

Are these scores from CompareLLM’s own evals?

No. V1 aggregates public leaderboards (and optional first-party latency pings). Each cell names its source and date. Read /methodology.

What does preference Elo mean on this page?

Preference Elo is a crowd vote from LMArena / Arena. People see two hidden answers and pick the one they like more. The model that wins more often gets a higher Elo. That means people preferred it — not that it passed a school test. It is not SWE-bench, not accuracy, and not a number we invent. Grok 3 and Qwen 2.5 Plus Elo cells are dated snapshots from the named source — we do not compute Arena ourselves.