Model comparison

GPT-5.6 Sol vs Qwen3.5-9B

GPT-5.6 Sol is the stronger model overall, scoring 65.0 to 33.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 71× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-5.6 Sol's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 8 shared benchmarks.

GPT-5.6 Sol OpenAI

65.0

Rank #7 Confirmed

Qwen3.5-9B Alibaba (Qwen)

33.8

Rank #236 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-5.6 Sol scores higher in 5 categories and Qwen3.5-9B in 0 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where GPT-5.6 Sol leads 74.8 to 23.1.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Chess Puzzles: 64% for GPT-5.6 Sol and 12% for Qwen3.5-9B.
  • Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $4 / $20 for GPT-5.6 Sol.
  • GPT-5.6 Sol accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 262K.
  • Qwen3.5-9B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

GPT-5.6 Sol and Qwen3.5-9B specifications
GPT-5.6 SolQwen3.5-9B
ProviderOpenAIAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index65.033.8
Released2026-07-092026-02-23
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1.05M262K
Max output128K66K
Input $ / M tokens$4$0.10
Output $ / M tokens$20$0.15
Results tracked6510

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Category by category

Coding GPT-5.6 Sol leads

GPT-5.6 Sol: 65.1 (#7), Qwen3.5-9B: 35.9 (#217)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolQwen3.5-9B
SciCode57.1%27.5%
DeepSWE72.7%—
FrontierCode47.5%—
CursorBench41.7%—
LMArena WebDev1618—
FrontierSWE32.2%—
GSO76.5%—
WeirdML89.4%—
LMArena Coding1498—
MirrorCode20%—
ALE-Bench2,177—

Agentic & Tool Use GPT-5.6 Sol leads

GPT-5.6 Sol: 50.3 (#7), Qwen3.5-9B: 14.5 (#151)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolQwen3.5-9B
Terminal-Bench—9.2%
APEX-Agents51.4%—
OSWorld 2.027.3%—
τ²-bench Banking46.9%—
PostTrainBench36.2%—
BALROG60%—
GBAEval52.6%—
GDP.pdf30.7%—
LMArena Search1257—
Vending-Bench 29,619—

Reasoning GPT-5.6 Sol leads

GPT-5.6 Sol: 74.8 (#8), Qwen3.5-9B: 23.1 (#182)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolQwen3.5-9B
CritPt32.3%0.3%
Chess Puzzles64%12%
DTBench96%71.2%
LMCA59.2%24.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index161.66139.46
ARC-AGI-292.5%—
SimpleBench71.7%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark67%—
NYT Connections (extended)93.8%—
ARC-AGI-197.5%—
EnigmaEval37.1%—
EBR-Bench44.8%—
LMArena Hard Prompts1484—
Mystery Game Puzzles58%—
Surface Evolver Bench93.1%—
Bench to the Future 30.14—

Math GPT-5.6 Sol leads

GPT-5.6 Sol: 85.6 (#9), Qwen3.5-9B: 34.8 (#192)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolQwen3.5-9B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025100%61.7%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)89.1%—
FrontierMath Tier 482.9%—
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions—48.5%
ProofBench83%—
LMArena Math1474—
FrontierMath Erdős0%—

Knowledge GPT-5.6 Sol leads

GPT-5.6 Sol: 64.3 (#18), Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#84)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolQwen3.5-9B
GPQA Diamond93.5%79%
SimpleQA Verified69.7%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate12.4%—
LMArena Expert1516—

Multimodal Not comparable

GPT-5.6 Sol: 48.6 (#9), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolQwen3.5-9B
LMArena Vision1281—
Blueprint-Bench 233.6%—
Furniture Assembly56.7%—
LMArena Document1483—

Multilingual Not comparable

GPT-5.6 Sol: 55.3 (#32), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolQwen3.5-9B
LMArena Non-English1452—
LMArena Chinese1527—
LMArena French1477—
LMArena German1476—
LMArena Japanese1471—
LMArena Korean1442—
LMArena Russian1468—
LMArena Spanish1441—

Instruction Following Not comparable

GPT-5.6 Sol: 77.7 (#16), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolQwen3.5-9B
LMArena Instruction Following1482—

Long Context Not comparable

GPT-5.6 Sol: 45.4 (#42), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolQwen3.5-9B
LMArena Longer Query1480—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

GPT-5.6 Sol: 73.3 (#12), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5.6 SolQwen3.5-9B
LMArena Text1457—
LMArena Creative Writing1448—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1972—
EQ-Bench 41250—
LMArena Multi-Turn1460—

Frequently asked questions

Is GPT-5.6 Sol better than Qwen3.5-9B?

GPT-5.6 Sol is the stronger model overall, scoring 65.0 to 33.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 71× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-5.6 Sol's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, GPT-5.6 Sol 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; GPT-5.6 Sol lists at $4 and $20.

Is GPT-5.6 Sol or Qwen3.5-9B better for coding?

GPT-5.6 Sol scores higher on coding benchmarks: 65.1 versus 35.9 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

GPT-5.6 Sol does, with 1.05M tokens against 262K.

How many benchmarks do GPT-5.6 Sol and Qwen3.5-9B share?

8 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-5.6 Sol has 65 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.

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