GPT-4o vs Mixtral 8x22B vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct

GPT-4o is the better all-round choice, scoring 43/100 against Qwen2.5 72B Instruct (40) and Mixtral 8x22B (33). It leads on inputs & features. Qwen2.5 72B Instruct wins on price. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.

Qwen2.5 72B Instruct is cheaper at $1.40 input / $5.60 output per million tokens (official Alibaba API price). Mixtral 8x22B costs $2.00 input / $6.00 output per million tokens (official Mistral API price); GPT-4o costs $2.50 input / $10.00 output per million tokens (official OpenAI API price). At a typical mix of three input tokens to one output token, that is $2.45 per million tokens for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct versus $3.00 for Mixtral 8x22B (1.2× as much) and $4.38 for GPT-4o (1.8× as much).

Qwen2.5 72B Instruct scores higher on the Capabilities Index (ECI): Qwen2.5 72B Instruct 129.0 (#128 of 148), GPT-4o 129.0 (#129 of 148) and Mixtral 8x22B 122.0 (#139 of 148). The confidence ranges of the top two overlap (123.8–130.7 vs 124.2–131.5), so treat the gap as small. On individual benchmarks: GPQA Diamond — Qwen2.5 72B Instruct 49.2%, GPT-4o 48.9%, Mixtral 8x22B 34.1%.

There are no published SWE-bench Verified results for GPT-4o, Mixtral 8x22B and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct yet, so there is no like-for-like coding score. On overall capability, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct leads, which tends to carry over to coding, but test on your own codebase. All three support tool calling for agent workflows.

Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has the largest context window at 131,072 tokens, against 128,000 for GPT-4o and 64,000 for Mixtral 8x22B. Maximum output per response: GPT-4o up to 16,384, Mixtral 8x22B up to 64,000, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct up to 8,192 tokens.

GPT-4o accepts text, images and PDFs; Mixtral 8x22B accepts text; Qwen2.5 72B Instruct accepts text. GPT-4o handles the widest range of inputs.

Mixtral 8x22B and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct publishes its weights and can be self-hosted; GPT-4o is proprietary.

Qwen2.5 72B Instruct is the newest, released Sep 19, 2024. GPT-4o came out May 13, 2024; Mixtral 8x22B came out Apr 17, 2024. Knowledge cutoff: GPT-4o Sep 2023, Mixtral 8x22B Apr 2024, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct Apr 2024.

Each model gets a 0–100 score on capability (50%, independent benchmark results); price (25%, blended price per million tokens (3 input : 1 output), log scale); inputs & features (15%, image, PDF, audio and video input, tool calling, structured output and reasoning); context window (10%, maximum tokens per request, log scale). Dimensions missing for any model are dropped and the remaining weights rescaled, so every model is judged on the same evidence. Specs and prices come from public model listings and the labs’ own API pages; capability scores come from independent benchmark runs. Data updated Oct 4, 2026.