GPT-5 Mini vs Qwen3.7 Plus

What are we comparing?

GPT-5 Mini and Qwen3.7 Plus are two budget models, built for high volumes at a low price, one from OpenAI, the other from Alibaba Cloud (Qwen). GPT-5 Mini was released on August 7, 2025, Qwen3.7 Plus on June 2, 2026.

All figures below come from public sources checked on October 22, 2026: models.dev and OpenRouter for prices and capabilities, Epoch AI for scores.

Which one is more capable?

On our capability index, GPT-5 Mini scores 62.9 out of 100 and Qwen3.7 Plus 56.2. GPT-5 Mini leads by 6.7 points.

On the 3 benchmarks reported for both, GPT-5 Mini wins 1 time and Qwen3.7 Plus 2:

• GPQA Diamond (PhD-level science questions): GPT-5 Mini 75%, Qwen3.7 Plus 87.9%
• OTIS Mock AIME (competition mathematics problems): GPT-5 Mini 86.7%, Qwen3.7 Plus 93.3%
• FrontierMath (very hard research-level mathematics): GPT-5 Mini 46.7%, Qwen3.7 Plus 34.4%

Budget

GPT-5 Mini costs $0.25 per million input tokens and $2 per million output tokens; Qwen3.7 Plus costs $0.40 and $1.6.

For a typical agent task (read 20,000 tokens, write 2,000), expect $0.009 with GPT-5 Mini versus $0.011 with Qwen3.7 Plus. GPT-5 Mini is 1.2 times cheaper, a gap that adds up quickly over 1,000 tasks: $2.2 difference.

Run the numbers with your own volumes in the agent cost calculator.

Features and limits

Qwen3.7 Plus reads more in one go: 1,000,000 tokens of context (roughly 1,500 pages), versus 272,000 for GPT-5 Mini.

Reasoning mode: GPT-5 Mini yes, Qwen3.7 Plus yes. Tool calling: GPT-5 Mini yes, Qwen3.7 Plus yes. Image input: GPT-5 Mini yes, Qwen3.7 Plus yes.

Neither publishes its weights: both are used through an API.

Knowledge cutoff: May 30, 2024 for GPT-5 Mini, April 2025 for Qwen3.7 Plus.

In short

Our reading of the data:

• Choose GPT-5 Mini for a higher capability index and a lower cost.
• Choose Qwen3.7 Plus for a larger context window and a more recent release.

This verdict relies on public figures; it does not replace a trial on your own tasks.