ModelRefs / Claude Opus 4 vs Qwen2.5-VL 72B
Claude Opus 4 vs Qwen2.5-VL 72B
Claude Opus 4 vs Qwen2.5-VL 72B: side-by-side benchmarks, pricing, context windows, coding ability and deployment. Pick the right model for your stack.
Overview
Claude Opus 4: Claude Opus 4 is Anthropic's May 2025 hybrid-reasoning model for complex coding, reasoning, multimodal analysis, and long-running agent workflows. The dated claude-opus-4-20250514 snapshot was retired on Anthropic-operated platforms on June 15, 2026 and is retained as a historical evaluation and migration reference.
Qwen2.5-VL 72B: Qwen2.5-VL 72B Instruct is the largest vision-language model in Alibaba's Qwen2.5-VL line, accepting images and video alongside text. Qwen highlights comprehension of videos over an hour long, structured extraction from documents such as invoices, forms and tables, visual grounding returned as bounding boxes or points, and agentic computer and phone use. The published config sets a 32,768-token context, and Qwen advises against YaRN extension here because it degrades temporal and spatial localisation.
Context window: Claude Opus 4 accepts up to 200,000 tokens, Qwen2.5-VL 72B up to 128,000. Confirm the limit for your specific deployment channel before relying on it.
Claude Opus 4 vs Qwen2.5-VL 72B at a glance
| Attribute | Claude Opus 4 | Qwen2.5-VL 72B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Alibaba |
| Released | 2025-05-22 | 2025-01-26 |
| Context window | 200,000 tokens | 128,000 tokens |
| Input price | $15/M tokens | Free / self-hosted |
| Output price | $75/M tokens | Free / self-hosted |
| Licence | Proprietary | Qwen License |
| Self-hostable | No, hosted only | Yes, open weights |
| Modalities | text, vision | text, vision |
Benchmarks reported for both
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | Qwen2.5-VL 72B | Reported |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMMU (accuracy) | 76.5 | 70.2 | 2025-05-22 / 2025-01-26 |
Each row compares the same benchmark, the same reported metric, and the same task set. Scores are as published by their cited sources on the dates shown. Different runs still use different harnesses and prompts, so treat these as directional evidence rather than a head-to-head result.
Where they differ most
- OCR: Claude Opus 4 70%, Qwen2.5-VL 72B 87%. Qwen2.5-VL 72B leads on this dimension.
- Multimodal: Claude Opus 4 70%, Qwen2.5-VL 72B 75%. Qwen2.5-VL 72B leads on this dimension.
- Reasoning: Claude Opus 4 79%, Qwen2.5-VL 72B 75%. Claude Opus 4 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 Claude Opus 4 vs Qwen2.5-VL 72B.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, Claude Opus 4 or Qwen2.5-VL 72B?
Claude Opus 4 and Qwen2.5-VL 72B target different workloads — see the benchmark and pricing tables for a side-by-side answer.
Is Claude Opus 4 cheaper than Qwen2.5-VL 72B?
Compare $0.0150 vs $0.00000 on this page.