Is Qwen2.5 Coder 32B Instruct a good deal?
Whether anything in this catalogue beats Qwen2.5 Coder 32B Instruct on both quality and price, and what you give up if it does. A computation on the current catalogue, not an opinion.
13 undominated of 136 · Sep 23, 2026
As of Sep 23, 2026, Qwen2.5 Coder 32B Instruct is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. GLM 5.3 Flash scores 242.0 higher and costs 68% less, with a covering envelope. 13 of 136 rated, priced standard models are undominated.
Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements
GLM 5.3 Flash is both better and cheaper than Qwen2.5 Coder 32B Instruct: 242.0 points higher on LMArena and 68% less per million tokens, $0.51 cheaper at this mix.
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1229.9
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$0.745/M
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1471.9
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$0.237/M
Qwen2.5 Coder 32B Instruct takes text, returns up to 29,491 tokens from a 32,768-token context, and is listed by 1 seller.
Compared against 136 rated, priced models on this lens: 44 models dominate it and give up nothing, 5 more dominate it but give something up. Qwen2.5 Coder 32B Instruct scores 1229.9 at $0.74 per million tokens for this mix.
Envelope-safe replacements
Each row scores at least as high, costs no more, and covers this model’s context, output, modalities, tools, and reasoning. A cheaper narrower model is not listed here.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| GLM 5.3 Flash | 1471.9 +242.0 | $0.237/M | 68% |
| MiMo-V2.5-Pro | 1464.8 +234.9 | $0.544/M | 27% |
| Qwen3.7 Plus | 1454.2 +224.3 | $0.560/M | 25% |
| Hy3 | 1440.6 +210.7 | $0.144/M | 81% |
| Qwen3.6 Plus | 1436.7 +206.8 | $0.731/M | 2% |
| GLM 4.7 | 1435.9 +206.0 | $0.738/M | 1% |
| Gemma 4 26B A4B | 1434.5 +204.6 | $0.143/M | 81% |
| MiniMax M3 | 1433.5 +203.6 | $0.525/M | 30% |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 | 1431.8 +201.9 | $0.103/M | 86% |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | 1429.9 +200.0 | $0.450/M | 40% |
| MiMo-V2.5 | 1427.4 +197.5 | $0.175/M | 77% |
| DeepSeek V3.2 | 1424.8 +194.9 | $0.302/M | 59% |
| DeepSeek V3.2 Exp | 1422.6 +192.7 | $0.305/M | 59% |
| Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct | 1420.6 +190.7 | $0.632/M | 15% |
| Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507 | 1419.8 +189.9 | $0.153/M | 79% |
| DeepSeek V3.1 | 1419.7 +189.8 | $0.425/M | 43% |
| Qwen3.5-122B-A10B | 1417.9 +188.0 | $0.715/M | 4% |
| DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus | 1416.9 +187.0 | $0.453/M | 39% |
| Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview | 1415.3 +185.4 | $0.563/M | 24% |
| Inkling Small | 1412.3 +182.4 | $0.637/M | 14% |
| Qwen3.5-27B | 1408.1 +178.2 | $0.536/M | 28% |
| MiniMax M2.7 | 1404.6 +174.7 | $0.525/M | 30% |
| Step 3.5 Flash | 1403.7 +173.8 | $0.150/M | 80% |
| Qwen3.5-Flash | 1397.7 +167.8 | $0.114/M | 85% |
| GLM 4.5 Air | 1383.7 +153.8 | $0.310/M | 58% |
| Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 | 1383.6 +153.7 | $0.084/M | 89% |
| Solar Pro 4 | 1377.3 +147.4 | $0.158/M | 79% |
| GLM 4.6V | 1376.5 +146.6 | $0.450/M | 40% |
| DeepSeek V3 0324 | 1375.0 +145.1 | $0.438/M | 41% |
| GPT-5 Mini | 1373.0 +143.1 | $0.688/M | 8% |
| GPT-5.4 Nano | 1372.9 +143.0 | $0.463/M | 38% |
| Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Thinking | 1367.8 +137.9 | $0.412/M | 45% |
| gpt-oss-120b | 1365.9 +136.0 | $0.262/M | 65% |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 1358.9 +129.0 | $0.473/M | 37% |
| Gemma 3 27B | 1357.7 +127.8 | $0.172/M | 77% |
| Mercury 2 | 1357.6 +127.7 | $0.375/M | 50% |
| GLM 4.7 Flash | 1352.2 +122.3 | $0.145/M | 80% |
| MiniMax M2 | 1342.1 +112.2 | $0.446/M | 40% |
| Trinity Large Thinking | 1341.8 +111.9 | $0.388/M | 48% |
| GPT-4.1 Mini | 1340.2 +110.3 | $0.700/M | 6% |
| GPT-5 Nano | 1319.7 +89.8 | $0.138/M | 82% |
| Granite 4.2 8B | 1316.8 +86.9 | $0.107/M | 86% |
| gpt-oss-20b | 1287.3 +57.4 | $0.036/M | 95% |
| GPT-4.1 Nano | 1284.7 +54.8 | $0.175/M | 77% |
Higher score, lower price, named losses
Not a drop-in. The loss is why these are not a recommendation.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You give up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemma 4 31B | 1441.7 | $0.153/M | max output |
| Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct | 1417.6 | $0.343/M | max output |
| Qwen3.5-35B-A3B | 1395.5 | $0.547/M | max output |
| Qwen3 32B | 1340.0 | $0.130/M | max output |
| Gemma 3 12B | 1334.2 | $0.075/M | max output |
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