Model comparison

GPT-4o mini vs Qwen3.5 35B-A3B

Qwen3.5 35B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.0 to 25.5 on the Noometry Index. GPT-4o mini costs 2.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 35B-A3B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 23 shared benchmarks.

GPT-4o mini OpenAI

25.5

Rank #343 Confirmed

Qwen3.5 35B-A3B Alibaba (Qwen)

42.0

Rank #123 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 23 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-4o mini scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads 47.8 to 17.7.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 6.9% for GPT-4o mini and 70% for Qwen3.5 35B-A3B.
  • GPT-4o mini is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens, against $0.25 / $2 for Qwen3.5 35B-A3B.
  • Qwen3.5 35B-A3B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
  • Qwen3.5 35B-A3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

GPT-4o mini and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B specifications
GPT-4o miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
ProviderOpenAIAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index25.542.0
Released2024-07-182026-02-01
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window128K262K
Max output16K66K
Input $ / M tokens$0.15$0.25
Output $ / M tokens$0.60$2
Results tracked6028

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Category by category

Coding Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads

GPT-4o mini: 22.0 (#335), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 33.8 (#251)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-4o miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Coding12901410
Aider Polyglot3.6%—
LMArena WebDev—1254
SciCode—29.3%
WeirdML11.8%—
BigCodeBench Instruct46.1%—
LiveBench Coding43.1%—
BigCodeBench Complete57.4%—
HumanEval+83.5%—
MBPP+72.2%—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

GPT-4o mini: 27.5 (#101), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-4o miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
BALROG17.4%—

Reasoning Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads

GPT-4o mini: 8.7 (#347), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 24.6 (#161)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-4o miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
Chess Puzzles0%10%
LMArena Hard Prompts12671400
DTBench54.4%80%
LMCA10.4%29.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index126.56142.52
ARC-AGI-20%—
SimpleBench10.7%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark28.8%—
CritPt—0.6%
LiveBench Reasoning32.8%—
Mystery Game Puzzles12%—
LiveBench Data Analysis50%—
LiveBench41.3%—
PIQA88.7%—

Math Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads

GPT-4o mini: 10.4 (#314), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 39.9 (#97)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-4o miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-20256.9%70%
LMArena Math12671404
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)0.7%—
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions—56%
Omni-MATH28%—
LiveBench Math36.3%—
MATH Level 552.6%—
GSM8K91.3%—

Knowledge Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads

GPT-4o mini: 17.7 (#284), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 47.8 (#79)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-4o miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
GPQA Diamond37.7%83.5%
LMArena Expert12351408
SimpleQA Verified8.3%—
MMLU-Pro60.3%—
Confabulations37.2%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate—10.5%
GPQA (HELM)36.8%—
BoolQ88.7%—
MMLU81.8%—

Multimodal Not comparable

GPT-4o mini: 25.9 (#122), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-4o miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Vision1066—
Video-MME64.8%—
GeoBench64%—
VPCT34%—

Multilingual Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads

GPT-4o mini: 42.0 (#199), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 50.0 (#127)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-4o miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Non-English12661378
LMArena Chinese12651457
LMArena French12971412
LMArena German12721367
LMArena Japanese12161325
LMArena Korean11951356
LMArena Russian12751376
LMArena Spanish12761392

Instruction Following Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads

GPT-4o mini: 61.9 (#239), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 72.8 (#128)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-4o miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Instruction Following12581379
LiveBench Instruction Following56.8%—
IFEval78.2%—

Long Context Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads

GPT-4o mini: 39.1 (#186), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 42.4 (#127)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-4o miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Longer Query12891389

Writing & Preference Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads

GPT-4o mini: 39.5 (#248), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 57.9 (#124)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-4o miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Text12861395
LMArena Creative Writing12681346
LMArena Multi-Turn12851390
Short-Story Creative Writing67.2%—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing873—
WildBench79.1%—
LiveBench Language28.6%—

Frequently asked questions

Is GPT-4o mini better than Qwen3.5 35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5 35B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.0 to 25.5 on the Noometry Index. GPT-4o mini costs 2.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 35B-A3B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, GPT-4o mini or Qwen3.5 35B-A3B?

GPT-4o mini is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Qwen3.5 35B-A3B lists at $0.25 and $2.

Is GPT-4o mini or Qwen3.5 35B-A3B better for coding?

Qwen3.5 35B-A3B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.8 versus 22.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.5 35B-A3B does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do GPT-4o mini and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B share?

23 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-4o mini has 60 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B has 28.

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