Qwen3 vs GPT-4 vs Claude 3: A Head-to-Head Comparison of Top AI Models
With the rise of large language models dominating both research and industry, three names top the leaderboard: Qwen3, GPT-4, and Claude 3.
Introduction: The AI Model Race in 2025
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GPT-4, the flagship model from OpenAI, is widely used but closed-source.
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Claude 3, from Anthropic, is privacy-conscious and excels at multi-step reasoning.
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Qwen3, a family of open-source models by Alibaba, is quickly closing the gap — and even outperforming them in key areas.
In this blog post, we’ll compare these giants in terms of performance, pricing, agentic behavior, and accessibility to help you decide which model suits your needs best.
1. Benchmark Performance Comparison
| Task / Benchmark | Qwen3-72B | Claude 3 Sonnet | GPT-4 (turbo) |
|---|---|---|---|
| HumanEval (Coding) | ✅ 83.1% (Coder) | 81.5% | 87.2% |
| GSM8K (Math Reasoning) | ✅ 92.0% | 89.0% | 94.0% |
| MMLU (General Knowledge) | 79.5% | ✅ 84.5% | ✅ 86.4% |
| ARC (Logic) | ✅ 71.2% | 68.4% | ✅ 76.0% |
| Tool Use / Agentic Tasks | ✅ Excellent | ✅ Excellent | ✅ Excellent |
Qwen3 models (especially Qwen3-Coder) match or beat Claude Sonnet in most coding and STEM benchmarks — and even approach GPT-4 in key logic tasks.
2. Agentic Capabilities & Tool Use
| Feature | Qwen3-Coder | Claude 3 Sonnet | GPT-4 (with Tools) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Web-Browsing Agent | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| File / Code Execution | ✅ CLI/Web/Act mode | ✅ File Upload | ✅ Code Interpreter |
| Tool API Integration | ✅ Open Tools CLI | ❌ Limited | ✅ Yes |
| Memory & Re-Planning | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
Qwen3-Coder stands out for local agent execution, tool integration, and web simulation support — especially important for developers and researchers.
3. Architecture & Accessibility
| Attribute | Qwen3 | Claude 3 | GPT-4 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Source? | ✅ Apache 2.0 License | ❌ No | ❌ No |
| Available Sizes | 0.5B → 72B → 480B MoE | Claude Haiku → Opus | GPT-3.5 / GPT-4 |
| Can Run Locally? | ✅ Yes (Hugging Face) | ❌ No (Cloud only) | ❌ No (API only) |
| Mixture of Experts? | ✅ Yes (Coder model) | ❌ No | ✅ (GPT-4 Turbo est.) |
| Commercial Usage Rights | ✅ Free & commercial | ❌ Restricted | ❌ Restricted |
4. Pricing Comparison (2025)
| Model/API Tier | Price / 1M tokens (input) | Price / 1M tokens (output) | Hosting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen3 (self-hosted) | ✅ Free | ✅ Free | Local / Cloud |
| Claude 3 Sonnet | $3.00 | $15.00 | Cloud-only |
| GPT-4 Turbo | $10.00 | $30.00 | Cloud-only |
Qwen3 offers the best pricing advantage, especially if you host the models locally or via open-source inference engines.
5. Developer Ecosystem
| Category | Qwen3 Ecosystem | Claude 3 | GPT-4 |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub Tools | ✅ Qwen-Agent, Qwen-CLI | ❌ Closed Source | ❌ Closed Source |
| Community Forks | 🔥 Growing on Hugging Face | Private Access Only | API-only |
| Fine-Tuning | ✅ Open (LoRA, adapters) | ❌ Not available | ❌ Not available |
| Embedding Models | ✅ Available (Qwen-Embedding) | ❌ No | ✅ Yes (OpenAI) |
Conclusion: Which Model Wins?
| Use Case | Best Model |
|---|---|
| Open-source coding agents | ✅ Qwen3-Coder |
| General reasoning (closed) | Claude 3 Sonnet |
| Creative writing / advanced multimodal | GPT-4 (Turbo) |
| Long-context local use | ✅ Qwen3-72B / MoE |
| Best cost-performance ratio | ✅ Qwen3 Models |
In 2025, Qwen3 is the most accessible, flexible, and efficient choice for developers and startups who want full control of their LLMs without sacrificing performance.
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Qwen3 Coder - Agentic Coding Adventure
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