Model comparison
GPT-4.1 mini vs Qwen3.6 35B-A3B
Qwen3.6 35B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.6 to 33.6 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 11 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-4.1 mini scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3.6 35B-A3B in 4 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3.6 35B-A3B leads 28.0 to 10.8.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 44.7% for GPT-4.1 mini and 86.7% for Qwen3.6 35B-A3B.
- Qwen3.6 35B-A3B is cheaper at $0.25 / $1.49 per million input/output tokens, against $0.40 / $1.60 for GPT-4.1 mini.
- GPT-4.1 mini accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 262K.
- Qwen3.6 35B-A3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 33.6 | 37.6 |
| Released | 2025-04-14 | 2026-04-01 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1.05M | 262K |
| Max output | 33K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.40 | $0.25 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $1.60 | $1.49 |
| Results tracked | 47 | 14 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3.6 35B-A3B leads
GPT-4.1 mini: 30.6 (#293), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 37.2 (#196)
| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 40.4% | 35.8% |
| WeirdML | 37.6% | 34.5% |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 23.9% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | 32.4% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 48.9% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1367 | — |
| CadEval | 16% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use GPT-4.1 mini leads
GPT-4.1 mini: 33.3 (#55), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 22.1 (#134)
| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 23% |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 50.5% | — |
Reasoning Qwen3.6 35B-A3B leads
GPT-4.1 mini: 10.8 (#340), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 28.0 (#109)
| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0% | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 7% | 26% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 7% | 22% |
| DTBench | 68.8% | 73.9% |
| LMCA | 21.1% | 29.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 135.01 | 143.93 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 48.6% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 41.6% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 3.5% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1349 | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | — | 44.4% |
Math Qwen3.6 35B-A3B leads
GPT-4.1 mini: 24.1 (#270), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 38.9 (#121)
| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 6.7% | 20.4% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 44.7% | 86.7% |
| Omni-MATH | 49.1% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1343 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 87.3% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 4.5% | — |
Knowledge Qwen3.6 35B-A3B leads
GPT-4.1 mini: 34.7 (#194), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 51.3 (#68)
| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 65.8% | 84.8% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 12.7% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 78.3% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 61.4% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1338 | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
GPT-4.1 mini: 35.8 (#82), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: —
| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1181 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
GPT-4.1 mini: 45.7 (#166), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: —
| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1318 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1329 | — |
| LMArena French | 1358 | — |
| LMArena German | 1351 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1290 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1298 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1324 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1319 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
GPT-4.1 mini: 73.7 (#118), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: —
| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 90.4% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1333 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
GPT-4.1 mini: 31.8 (#275), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: —
| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | 44.4% | — |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1344 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
GPT-4.1 mini: 48.6 (#199), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: —
| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1340 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1300 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1147 | — |
| WildBench | 83.8% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1354 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is GPT-4.1 mini better than Qwen3.6 35B-A3B?
Qwen3.6 35B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.6 to 33.6 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, GPT-4.1 mini or Qwen3.6 35B-A3B?
Qwen3.6 35B-A3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $1.49 per million output tokens; GPT-4.1 mini lists at $0.40 and $1.60.
Is GPT-4.1 mini or Qwen3.6 35B-A3B better for coding?
Qwen3.6 35B-A3B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.2 versus 30.6 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
GPT-4.1 mini does, with 1.05M tokens against 262K.
How many benchmarks do GPT-4.1 mini and Qwen3.6 35B-A3B share?
11 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-4.1 mini has 47 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 35B-A3B has 14.