ModelRefs / GPT-5 vs QwQ 32B — Benchmarks, Pricing & Coding Comparison

GPT-5 vs QwQ 32B — Benchmarks, Pricing & Coding Comparison

GPT-5 vs QwQ 32B: side-by-side benchmarks, pricing, context windows, coding ability and deployment. Pick the right model for your stack.

Overview

GPT-5: GPT-5 is OpenAI's August 2025 reasoning model for coding, reasoning, and agentic tasks. The API model supports text input and output, image input, configurable reasoning effort, and an immutable gpt-5-2025-08-07 snapshot; OpenAI now classifies it as a previous-generation model.

Context window: GPT-5 accepts up to 400,000 tokens, QwQ 32B up to 131,072. Confirm the limit for your specific deployment channel before relying on it.

GPT-5 vs QwQ 32B at a glance

AttributeGPT-5QwQ 32B
ProviderOpenAIAlibaba
Released2025-08-072025-03-06
Context window400,000 tokens131,072 tokens
Input price$1.25/M tokens$0.15/M tokens
Output price$10/M tokens$0.6/M tokens
LicenceProprietaryApache-2.0
Self-hostableNo, hosted onlyYes, open weights
Modalitiestext, visiontext

Where they differ most

  • Cost Efficiency: GPT-5 47%, QwQ 32B 91%. QwQ 32B leads on this dimension.
  • Coding: GPT-5 81%, QwQ 32B 63%. GPT-5 leads on this dimension.

Capability scores are ModelRefs' own derived signals, not vendor claims or benchmark results. Validate against your own workload before relying on them.

Continue your research

Use these connected ModelRefs sections to compare alternatives, inspect implementation paths, and review the evidence and governance boundaries relevant to GPT-5 vs QwQ 32B — Benchmarks, Pricing & Coding Comparison.

Frequently asked questions

Which is better, GPT-5 or QwQ 32B?

GPT-5 and QwQ 32B target different workloads — see the benchmark and pricing tables for a side-by-side answer.

Is GPT-5 cheaper than QwQ 32B?

Compare $0.00125 vs $0.00015 on this page.