ERNIE 5.0 vs Hunyuan Hy4 Preview

Baidu · China  |  Tencent · China · Updated June 2026

Quick verdict

Pick ERNIE 5.0 for baidu's flagship omni-modal model — text, image and video understanding or particularly strong on chinese-language reasoning tasks. Pick Hunyuan Hy4 Preview for gpqa diamond (92.3) or terminal-bench (85.4). Choose Hunyuan Hy4 Preview if you need self-hosting or data privacy; ERNIE 5.0 if you want a managed API.

ERNIE 5.0 (Baidu) and Hunyuan Hy4 Preview (Tencent) are two of the models people most often weigh against each other in 2026. ERNIE 5.0 is baidu's flagship omni-modal ERNIE model — strong Chinese-language and multimodal reasoning at low cost, though it trails the Western frontier on independent benchmarks. Hunyuan Hy4 Preview is tencent's open-sourced (Apache 2.0) next-generation Hunyuan flagship preview, released August 28, 2026 as a 770B-parameter (49B active) MoE model that helped optimize its own training pipeline. They diverge most on price, context window and open vs. closed weights — each quantified below from the models' real specs.

Key differences at a glance

Side-by-side specs

SpecERNIE 5.0Hunyuan Hy4 Preview
ProviderBaidu (China) Tencent (China)
ReleasedJanuary 22, 2026 August 28, 2026
Context window128K (~192 pages) 1M+ tokens (~1,500 pages)
Price (in/out)$0.6/$2.1 per 1M tokens $0.834/$2.501 per 1M tokens
Open weight?No — API only Yes — self-hostable
Modalitiestext, image, video, code text
SWE-Bench VerifiedNot published Not published
MRCR v2 @ 1MNot published Not published

Who wins what

Baidu's flagship omni-modal model — text, image and video understanding

ERNIE 5.0

Hunyuan Hy4 Preview is comparatively weak here — labeled a 'preview', not yet Tencent's finalized GA flagship

Particularly strong on Chinese-language reasoning tasks

ERNIE 5.0

Baidu's flagship omni-modal ERNIE model — strong Chinese-language and multimodal reasoning at low cost, though it trails the Western frontier on independent benchmarks — and it runs cheaper at $0.6/$2.1 per 1M tokens.

Competitive API pricing (around $0.60/$2.10 per million tokens)

ERNIE 5.0

ERNIE 5.0 lists competitive API pricing (around $0.60/$2.10 per million tokens) among its strengths; Hunyuan Hy4 Preview does not.

GPQA Diamond (92.3)

Hunyuan Hy4 Preview

Tencent's open-sourced (Apache 2.0) next-generation Hunyuan flagship preview, released August 28, 2026 as a 770B-parameter (49B active) MoE model that helped optimize its own training pipeline — and it carries the larger 1M+ tokens context.

Terminal-Bench (85.4)

Hunyuan Hy4 Preview

Tencent's open-sourced (Apache 2.0) next-generation Hunyuan flagship preview, released August 28, 2026 as a 770B-parameter (49B active) MoE model that helped optimize its own training pipeline — and its weights are open while ERNIE 5.0 is API-only.

SWE-bench Multilingual (82.9)

Hunyuan Hy4 Preview

Tencent's open-sourced (Apache 2.0) next-generation Hunyuan flagship preview, released August 28, 2026 as a 770B-parameter (49B active) MoE model that helped optimize its own training pipeline — and it is the newer of the two.

Lowest cost at scale

ERNIE 5.0

At $0.6/$2.1 per 1M tokens, it is the cheaper of the two — the gap dominates the bill on high-volume workloads.

Largest single-prompt input

Hunyuan Hy4 Preview

Its 1M+ tokens window is about 7.8× larger than ERNIE 5.0's 128K, fitting roughly 1,500 pages in one prompt.

Which should you pick?

A cost-sensitive startup shipping high volume

ERNIE 5.0

At $0.6/$2.1 per 1M tokens it undercuts Hunyuan Hy4 Preview, and on millions of tokens that margin decides the monthly bill.

Someone analysing very long documents or codebases

Hunyuan Hy4 Preview

Larger 1M+ tokens window fits more in one prompt.

A team with data-privacy or self-hosting needs

Hunyuan Hy4 Preview

Open weights let you run it on your own hardware; ERNIE 5.0 is API-only.

Anyone whose priority is baidu's flagship omni-modal model — text, image and video understanding

ERNIE 5.0

It is specifically built for that.

Anyone whose priority is gpqa diamond (92.3)

Hunyuan Hy4 Preview

That is its strongest area.

ERNIE 5.0: where it fits

Baidu's flagship omni-modal ERNIE model — strong Chinese-language and multimodal reasoning at low cost, though it trails the Western frontier on independent benchmarks. Released January 22, 2026 by Baidu, it is built for baidu's flagship omni-modal model — text, image and video understanding, particularly strong on Chinese-language reasoning tasks, competitive API pricing (around $0.60/$2.10 per million tokens), and backed by a major lab with deep China-market integration.

Its trade-offs are real: trails the Western frontier on aggregate independent tests (AA Intelligence Index ~22 for the tracked Thinking Preview), parameter and architecture details are vendor-stated and opaque, closed weights on a China-hosted API, and 128K context is smaller than 1M-token rivals. At $0.6 in / $2.1 out per million tokens, it sits in the budget price band.

Hunyuan Hy4 Preview: where it fits

Tencent's open-sourced (Apache 2.0) next-generation Hunyuan flagship preview, released August 28, 2026 as a 770B-parameter (49B active) MoE model that helped optimize its own training pipeline. Released August 28, 2026 by Tencent, it is built for gPQA Diamond (92.3), terminal-Bench (85.4), sWE-bench Multilingual (82.9), and large jump in long-horizon coding vs prior Hunyuan model (DeepSWE 28.0 to 64.3).

Its trade-offs: text-only, no native vision support, labeled a 'preview', not yet Tencent's finalized GA flagship, and sWE-Marathon score still low in absolute terms (31.9) despite a large relative jump. At $0.834 in / $2.501 out per million tokens, it sits in the budget price band.

The bottom line for this matchup

The defining split here is open vs. closed. Hunyuan Hy4 Preview gives you weights you control — self-host it, fine-tune it, keep data in-house, pay only for hardware. ERNIE 5.0 gives you a managed, always-updated API with no infrastructure to run. Teams with GPUs, privacy requirements, or huge volume often favour the open model; teams that want zero ops and the latest capabilities favour the closed one. Capability is close enough that this operational question, not the benchmark, usually decides it.

Want both ERNIE 5.0 and Hunyuan Hy4 Preview without two subscriptions? LumiChats gives you these plus 40+ models under one ₹69/day pass (about $1/day) — draft with one, cross-check with the other.

See pricing

Frequently asked questions

Is ERNIE 5.0 or Hunyuan Hy4 Preview better for coding?

Public SWE-Bench figures are not available for either model, so the honest test is your own repository — run an identical real bug through both. By design, ERNIE 5.0 leans toward baidu's flagship omni-modal model — text, image and video understanding while Hunyuan Hy4 Preview leans toward gpqa diamond (92.3), and that positioning usually predicts which feels better on your codebase.

Which is cheaper, ERNIE 5.0 or Hunyuan Hy4 Preview?

Hunyuan Hy4 Preview is open-weight, so self-hosting means no per-token fee (you pay for hardware instead), while ERNIE 5.0 is API-metered at $0.6/$2.1 per 1M tokens. For most teams without GPUs, the API model is cheaper to start; at very high volume, self-hosting can win.

Which has the bigger context window?

Hunyuan Hy4 Preview — 1M+ tokens vs 128K, about 7.8× larger. Useful only if the model actually reasons over the full window, which not all do.

Can I use both ERNIE 5.0 and Hunyuan Hy4 Preview together?

Yes — a multi-model platform like LumiChats gives you ERNIE 5.0, Hunyuan Hy4 Preview and 40+ others under one ₹69/day pass (about $1/day), so you can draft with one and cross-check with the other instead of buying two subscriptions.

Which is newer, ERNIE 5.0 or Hunyuan Hy4 Preview?

Hunyuan Hy4 Preview — released August 28, 2026, about 7 months after ERNIE 5.0.

Related comparisons

Specifications and benchmarks reflect publicly reported figures as of June 2026 and may change as providers release updates. Always verify on your own workload.