Compare/Qwen3 8B (Reasoning) vs GPT-5.1 Codex mini (high)

Qwen3 8B (Reasoning)vsGPT-5.1 Codex mini (high)

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

Alibaba

Qwen3 8B (Reasoning)

Input
$0.18/M
Output
$2.1/M
Speed
90 tok/s
TTFT
0.92s
OpenAI

GPT-5.1 Codex mini (high)

Input
$0.25/M
Output
$2/M
Speed
186 tok/s
TTFT
6.58s

Winner by Category

Cheaper
Qwen3 8B (Reasoning)
Faster (tok/s)
GPT-5.1 Codex mini (high)
Lower Latency
Qwen3 8B (Reasoning)
Benchmarks (1-11)
GPT-5.1 Codex mini (high)

Pricing Comparison

MetricQwen3 8B (Reasoning)GPT-5.1 Codex mini (high)
Input ($/M tokens)$0.18$0.25
Output ($/M tokens)$2.1$2
Cost for 1M input + 100K output tokens:
Qwen3 8B (Reasoning)$0.39
GPT-5.1 Codex mini (high)$0.45

Speed Comparison

Output Speed (tokens/s) — higher is better
Qwen3 8B (Reasoning)
90 tok/s
GPT-5.1 Codex mini (high)
186 tok/s
Time to First Token (seconds) — lower is better
Qwen3 8B (Reasoning)
0.92s
GPT-5.1 Codex mini (high)
6.58s

Benchmark Comparison

Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks

Intelligence Index
13.238.6
Coding Index
9.036.4
Math Index
19.091.7
GPQA Diamond
58.9%81.3%
MMLU-Pro
74.3%82.0%
LiveCodeBench
40.6%83.6%
AIME 2025
19.0%91.7%
MATH-500
90.4%
Humanity's Last Exam
4.2%16.9%
SciCode
22.6%42.6%
IFBench
33.5%67.9%
TerminalBench
2.3%33.3%
Qwen3 8B (Reasoning)1 wins
11 winsGPT-5.1 Codex mini (high)

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is cheaper, Qwen3 8B (Reasoning) or GPT-5.1 Codex mini (high)?

Qwen3 8B (Reasoning) is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.66/M tokens vs $0.69/M for GPT-5.1 Codex mini (high).

Which model performs better on benchmarks?

GPT-5.1 Codex mini (high) wins 11 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 1 for Qwen3 8B (Reasoning). See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.

Which is faster for real-time applications?

GPT-5.1 Codex mini (high) generates tokens faster at 186 tok/s vs 90 tok/s. Qwen3 8B (Reasoning) also has lower time-to-first-token (0.92s vs 6.58s).

When should I use Qwen3 8B (Reasoning) vs GPT-5.1 Codex mini (high)?

Choose based on your priorities: Qwen3 8B (Reasoning) for lower cost, GPT-5.1 Codex mini (high) for stronger benchmark performance, and GPT-5.1 Codex mini (high) for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.