Compare/GPT-4.1 vs Qwen3 235B A22B (Reasoning)

GPT-4.1vsQwen3 235B A22B (Reasoning)

Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.

OpenAI

GPT-4.1

Input
$2/M
Output
$8/M
Speed
96 tok/s
TTFT
0.59s
Alibaba

Qwen3 235B A22B (Reasoning)

Input
$0.7/M
Output
$8.4/M
Speed
51 tok/s
TTFT
1.21s

Winner by Category

Cheaper
Qwen3 235B A22B (Reasoning)
Faster (tok/s)
GPT-4.1
Lower Latency
GPT-4.1
Benchmarks (4-8)
Qwen3 235B A22B (Reasoning)

Pricing Comparison

MetricGPT-4.1Qwen3 235B A22B (Reasoning)
Input ($/M tokens)$2$0.7
Output ($/M tokens)$8$8.4
Cost for 1M input + 100K output tokens:
GPT-4.1$2.80
Qwen3 235B A22B (Reasoning)$1.54

Speed Comparison

Output Speed (tokens/s) — higher is better
GPT-4.1
96 tok/s
Qwen3 235B A22B (Reasoning)
51 tok/s
Time to First Token (seconds) — lower is better
GPT-4.1
0.59s
Qwen3 235B A22B (Reasoning)
1.21s

Benchmark Comparison

Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks

Intelligence Index
26.319.8
Coding Index
21.817.4
Math Index
34.782.0
GPQA Diamond
66.6%70.0%
MMLU-Pro
80.6%82.8%
LiveCodeBench
45.7%62.2%
AIME 2025
34.7%82.0%
MATH-500
91.3%93.0%
Humanity's Last Exam
4.6%11.7%
SciCode
38.1%39.9%
IFBench
43.0%38.7%
TerminalBench
13.6%6.1%
GPT-4.14 wins
8 winsQwen3 235B A22B (Reasoning)

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is cheaper, GPT-4.1 or Qwen3 235B A22B (Reasoning)?

Qwen3 235B A22B (Reasoning) is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $2.63/M tokens vs $3.50/M for GPT-4.1.

Which model performs better on benchmarks?

Qwen3 235B A22B (Reasoning) wins 8 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 4 for GPT-4.1. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.

Which is faster for real-time applications?

GPT-4.1 generates tokens faster at 96 tok/s vs 51 tok/s. GPT-4.1 also has lower time-to-first-token (0.59s vs 1.21s).

When should I use GPT-4.1 vs Qwen3 235B A22B (Reasoning)?

Choose based on your priorities: Qwen3 235B A22B (Reasoning) for lower cost, Qwen3 235B A22B (Reasoning) for stronger benchmark performance, and GPT-4.1 for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.