Head-to-head · multimodal vs multimodal

Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro vs Qwen3 Instruct: which model should you choose?

We compared Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro and Qwen3 Instruct on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro has the stronger average benchmark score; Qwen3 Instruct is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.

ByteDance

Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro

Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro is a multimodal model from ByteDance. It offers a 128,000-token context window, costs $14.10 per million input tokens and $54.74 per million output tokens, and averages 80.2 across the index's benchmark suite.

Input
$14.10 / 1M
Output
$54.74 / 1M
Context
128,000
Avg score
80.2
Open weights
No
Full Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro page
Alibaba Cloud

Qwen3 Instruct

Qwen3 Instruct is a multimodal model from Alibaba Cloud. It offers a 1,000,000-token context window, costs $5.06 per million input tokens and $25.39 per million output tokens, and averages 79.8 across the index's benchmark suite.

Input
$5.06 / 1M
Output
$25.39 / 1M
Context
1,000,000
Avg score
79.8
Open weights
Yes
Full Qwen3 Instruct page

Specification comparison

SpecDoubao 1.5 Pro ProQwen3 InstructEdge
Input price / 1M$14.10$5.06B
Output price / 1M$54.74$25.39B
Context window128,0001,000,000B
Max output8,192128,000B
Average score80.279.8A
Arena Elo1443.41419.2A
Open weightsNoYesB

Benchmark comparison

Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro wins 6, Qwen3 Instruct wins 6, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.

BenchmarkDoubao 1.5 Pro ProQwen3 InstructGapWinner
MMLU-Pro80.280.30.1Qwen3 Instruct
GPQA Diamond74.574.10.4Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro
SWE-bench Verified71.268.52.7Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro
HumanEval84.485.10.7Qwen3 Instruct
MATH-50085.486.10.7Qwen3 Instruct
AIME 202577.778.50.8Qwen3 Instruct
LiveCodeBench71.671.10.5Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro
IFEval87.889.11.3Qwen3 Instruct
TruthfulQA84.679.74.9Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro
HellaSwag87.287.00.2Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro
MMMU78.178.70.6Qwen3 Instruct
Arena Elo1443.41419.224.2Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro

Price analysis

On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro costs about $24.26 per million tokens and Qwen3 Instruct costs about $10.14. Qwen3 Instruct is roughly 58% cheaper than Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.

Qwen3 Instruct has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens, compared with 128,000 for Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.

Verdict

Across 12 shared benchmarks, Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro wins 6, Qwen3 Instruct wins 6, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro leads Qwen3 Instruct by 0.4 points (80.2 versus 79.8).

The price picture favours Qwen3 Instruct. The context picture favours Qwen3 Instruct. Those two dimensions often matter more than a few benchmark points once a model is good enough for the task.

If you need a single default, start with Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro for quality-sensitive work and Qwen3 Instruct for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.

Choose Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro if

  • You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.

Choose Qwen3 Instruct if

  • Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
  • You need the larger 1,000,000-token context window.
  • You need the larger 128,000-token output limit.
  • You need open weights for self-hosting or fine-tuning.

FAQ

Is Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro better than Qwen3 Instruct?

On the index average, Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro leads Qwen3 Instruct by 0.4 points (80.2 versus 79.8). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro wins 6 benchmarks, Qwen3 Instruct wins 6.

Which is cheaper, Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro or Qwen3 Instruct?

Qwen3 Instruct is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $10.14 per million tokens, versus $24.26 for Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro.

Which has the larger context window?

Qwen3 Instruct has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens. Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro has 128,000 tokens.

Are these models open weights?

Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro is proprietary; Qwen3 Instruct is open weights.

Which should I choose for production?

If you need a single default, start with Doubao 1.5 Pro Pro for quality-sensitive work and Qwen3 Instruct for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.

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