Compare / North Mini Code vs Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B
North Mini Code vs Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B
Updated November 2026
Verdict
North Mini Code scores higher on the Small LM Index: 64.7 vs 34.9. On the 5 benchmarks both labs report, North Mini Code wins 5 and Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B wins 0. Both need about 21.4 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization. Only Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.12 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted.
Pick North Mini Code if…
- you want the strongest model overall
- you need precise instruction following
- you build agents that call tools
Pick Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B if…
- you want a hosted API rather than running it yourself
- you work with long documents
- you need a permissive license (Apache-2.0)
- you want the more widely used model (more quantized builds and community support)
Specifications
| North Mini Code | Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B | |
|---|---|---|
| Small LM Index | 64.7 (likely 55–72) | 34.9 (likely 32–38) |
| Lab | Cohere · Other | Alibaba (Qwen) · China |
| Released | 2026-06-17 | 2025-07-31 |
| Parameters | 30B (3B active, MoE) | 30.5B (3.3B active, MoE) |
| Memory at 4-bit | ~21.4 GB | ~20.4 GB |
| Context window | 256K tokens | 262K tokens |
| Input | text | text |
| Reasoning | No thinking | No thinking |
| License | Unverified | Apache-2.0 |
| API price / 1M tokens | Self-host only | $0.12 ($0.070 in, $0.28 out) |
| Hugging Face downloads (30 days) | — | 1.3M |
Benchmarks
Higher is better. Bold marks the winner where both labs report a score. ≈ marks the index model's estimate for a score that wasn't reported, ✓ an independent measurement and * a score measured by another lab.
| Benchmark | North Mini Code | Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro Knowledge | ≈ 82 | 70.6✓ |
| GPQA Diamond Knowledge | 75.7✓ | 51.6✓ |
| Humanity's Last Exam Reasoning | 11.1✓ | 3.8✓ |
| AIME Math | ≈ 89 | 29.7✓ |
| LiveCodeBench Coding | ≈ 75 | 40.3✓ |
| SWE-bench Verified Coding | ≈ 56 | 51.6 |
| τ²-Bench Agentic | 37.4✓ | 34.5✓ |
| IFBench Instruction following | 57.6✓ | 32.7✓ |
| MATH-500 Math | — | 89.3✓ |
| AA-LCR Long context | 37.3✓ | 32.7✓ |
| SciCode Coding | 38.8✓ | — |
Scores are mostly reported by each lab with its own settings, so small gaps are noise. See the methodology. Open in the interactive comparison to add more models.
Questions
Which is better, North Mini Code or Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B?
North Mini Code scores higher on the Small LM Index: 64.7 vs 34.9. On the 5 benchmarks both labs report, North Mini Code wins 5 and Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B wins 0.
Which is cheaper to run?
Only Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.12 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted. Both need about 21.4 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization.
Which has the longer context window?
Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B has the longer context window: 262K tokens against 256K.
Can I use North Mini Code and Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B commercially?
North Mini Code is released under Unverified and Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B under Apache-2.0. Apache 2.0 and MIT allow commercial use; other licenses can add conditions, so read the license before shipping a product.
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