Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo vs Qwen3 Instruct: which model should you choose?
We compared Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo and Qwen3 Instruct on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Qwen3 Instruct has the stronger average benchmark score; Qwen3 Instruct is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo
Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo is a multimodal model from ByteDance. It offers a 128,000-token context window, costs $13.81 per million input tokens and $71.10 per million output tokens, and averages 79.4 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $13.81 / 1M
- Output
- $71.10 / 1M
- Context
- 128,000
- Avg score
- 79.4
- Open weights
- No
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
Specification comparison
| Spec | Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo | Qwen3 Instruct | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $13.81 | $5.06 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $71.10 | $25.39 | B |
| Context window | 128,000 | 1,000,000 | B |
| Max output | 65,536 | 128,000 | B |
| Average score | 79.4 | 79.8 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1433.0 | 1419.2 | A |
| Open weights | No | Yes | B |
Benchmark comparison
Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo wins 5, Qwen3 Instruct wins 6, and 1 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo | Qwen3 Instruct | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 80.3 | 80.3 | 0.0 | Tie |
| GPQA Diamond | 75.4 | 74.1 | 1.3 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo |
| SWE-bench Verified | 67.7 | 68.5 | 0.8 | Qwen3 Instruct |
| HumanEval | 85.0 | 85.1 | 0.1 | Qwen3 Instruct |
| MATH-500 | 81.4 | 86.1 | 4.7 | Qwen3 Instruct |
| AIME 2025 | 75.6 | 78.5 | 2.9 | Qwen3 Instruct |
| LiveCodeBench | 72.3 | 71.1 | 1.2 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo |
| IFEval | 88.9 | 89.1 | 0.2 | Qwen3 Instruct |
| TruthfulQA | 80.9 | 79.7 | 1.2 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo |
| HellaSwag | 88.2 | 87.0 | 1.2 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo |
| MMMU | 77.6 | 78.7 | 1.1 | Qwen3 Instruct |
| Arena Elo | 1433.0 | 1419.2 | 13.8 | Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo costs about $28.13 per million tokens and Qwen3 Instruct costs about $10.14. Qwen3 Instruct is roughly 64% cheaper than Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo. 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 Turbo. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo wins 5, Qwen3 Instruct wins 6, and 1 are tied. On the index average, Qwen3 Instruct leads Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo by 0.4 points (79.8 versus 79.4).
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 Qwen3 Instruct for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.
Choose Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo if
- You prefer ByteDance's tooling or already use it.
Choose Qwen3 Instruct if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- 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.
FAQ
Is Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo better than Qwen3 Instruct?
On the index average, Qwen3 Instruct leads Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo by 0.4 points (79.8 versus 79.4). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo wins 5 benchmarks, Qwen3 Instruct wins 6.
Which is cheaper, Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo or Qwen3 Instruct?
Qwen3 Instruct is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $10.14 per million tokens, versus $28.13 for Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo.
Which has the larger context window?
Qwen3 Instruct has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens. Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo has 128,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Doubao 1.5 Pro Turbo is proprietary; Qwen3 Instruct is open weights.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Qwen3 Instruct for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.