Noometry

Model comparison

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite vs Qwen3.5-9B

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.4 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 1.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 3 shared benchmarks.

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite Google

36.4

Rank #208 Confirmed

Qwen3.5-9B Alibaba (Qwen)

33.3

Rank #235 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 3 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite scores higher in 3 categories and Qwen3.5-9B in 2 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.5-9B leads 46.0 to 32.1.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is DTBench: 62.8% for Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite and 71.2% for Qwen3.5-9B.
  • Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.10 / $0.40 for Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite.
  • Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 262K.
  • Qwen3.5-9B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Gemini 2.5 Flash-LiteQwen3.5-9B
ProviderGoogleAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index36.433.3
Released2025-06-172026-02-23
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1.05M262K
Max output66K66K
Input $ / M tokens$0.10$0.10
Output $ / M tokens$0.40$0.15
Results tracked3310

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Category by category

Coding Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite leads

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 38.0 (#167), Qwen3.5-9B: 35.3 (#213)

BenchmarkGemini 2.5 Flash-LiteQwen3.5-9B
SciCode—27.5%
WeirdML35.2%—
LMArena Coding1373—
ALE-Bench325.9—

Agentic & Tool Use Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite leads

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 27.8 (#89), Qwen3.5-9B: 14.4 (#143)

BenchmarkGemini 2.5 Flash-LiteQwen3.5-9B
Terminal-Bench—9.2%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard36.9%—

Reasoning Qwen3.5-9B leads

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 21.5 (#196), Qwen3.5-9B: 22.5 (#178)

BenchmarkGemini 2.5 Flash-LiteQwen3.5-9B
DTBench62.8%71.2%
LMCA18.1%24.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index133.93139.45
Kagi LLM Benchmark40.5%—
CritPt—0.3%
Chess Puzzles—12%
LMArena Hard Prompts1377—

Math Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite leads

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 35.5 (#144), Qwen3.5-9B: 33.5 (#174)

BenchmarkGemini 2.5 Flash-LiteQwen3.5-9B
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions—48.5%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025—61.7%
Omni-MATH48%—
LMArena Math1373—

Knowledge Qwen3.5-9B leads

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 32.1 (#206), Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#77)

BenchmarkGemini 2.5 Flash-LiteQwen3.5-9B
GPQA Diamond—79%
MMLU-Pro53.7%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate3.3%—
GPQA (HELM)30.9%—
LMArena Expert1373—

Multimodal Not comparable

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 28.6 (#109), Qwen3.5-9B: —

BenchmarkGemini 2.5 Flash-LiteQwen3.5-9B
LMArena Vision1198—
VPCT30%—

Multilingual Not comparable

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 49.5 (#129), Qwen3.5-9B: —

BenchmarkGemini 2.5 Flash-LiteQwen3.5-9B
LMArena Non-English1369—
LMArena Chinese1404—
LMArena French1388—
LMArena German1390—
LMArena Japanese1359—
LMArena Korean1358—
LMArena Russian1373—
LMArena Spanish1396—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 70.2 (#163), Qwen3.5-9B: —

BenchmarkGemini 2.5 Flash-LiteQwen3.5-9B
IFEval81%—
LMArena Instruction Following1366—

Long Context Not comparable

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 33.3 (#257), Qwen3.5-9B: —

BenchmarkGemini 2.5 Flash-LiteQwen3.5-9B
Fiction.LiveBench47.2%—
LMArena Longer Query1373—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 57.0 (#130), Qwen3.5-9B: —

BenchmarkGemini 2.5 Flash-LiteQwen3.5-9B
LMArena Text1379—
LMArena Creative Writing1366—
WildBench81.8%—
LMArena Multi-Turn1367—

Frequently asked questions

Is Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite better than Qwen3.5-9B?

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.4 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 1.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite or Qwen3.5-9B?

Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite lists at $0.10 and $0.40.

Is Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite or Qwen3.5-9B better for coding?

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.0 versus 35.3 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite does, with 1.05M tokens against 262K.

How many benchmarks do Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite and Qwen3.5-9B share?

3 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite has 33 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.

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