Phi-4vsHy3

Verdict. Hy3 takes the aggregate benchmark matchup 2–0 across 2 categories. Real workloads usually care about a handful of specific tasks — see the per-benchmark table above.

Pricing. Both models sit in the budget bracket for output-token pricing. At 0.9× the per-million-token cost, Phi-4 is meaningfully cheaper if your traffic is output-heavy (long completions, document generation, agent loops). Phi-4 makes more sense when output volume is low and absolute reasoning quality justifies the premium.

Strengths. Phi-4 is strongest on Intelligence Index (4.6). Hy3 leads on Coding Index (58.8), Intelligence Index (42.2).

Speed. On throughput, Hy3 generates tokens at 67 tok/s versus 39 tok/s — about 42% faster. On time-to-first-token, Phi-4 responds in 2590ms vs 2880ms, which matters most for chat-style UIs.

Provider. Microsoft and Tencent sell to overlapping but distinct developer audiences: Microsoft tends to ship frontier reasoning models with premium positioning, while Tencent often prices more aggressively. Your existing vendor relationships, billing, and SLA preferences may matter as much as the raw numbers above.

Workload cost. Workload scenarios (per million requests at 30M input + 15M output tokens): Phi-4 costs $11.40 ($137/year); Hy3 costs $12.45 ($149/year). At a smaller 5M-input/2M-output scale (single-developer tool or prototype): Phi-4 ≈ $1.65/run, Hy3 ≈ $1.80/run. At agent/realtime scale (200M input / 100M output per million requests): Phi-4 ≈ $76/run, Hy3 ≈ $83/run. Phi-4 becomes more attractive at higher volume — the absolute per-token pricing difference compounds when you ship at scale.

Recommendation. Both models have legitimate use cases — the right answer depends on whether you are optimizing for benchmark ceiling, latency, or unit cost. Start with the cheaper / faster model, evaluate against your specific task, and only switch if the upgrade shows a meaningful lift.