Model comparison
GPT-5 Mini vs Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Qwen3.6 Max Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 51.1 to 41.7 on the Noometry Index. GPT-5 Mini costs 4.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Max Preview's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 26 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 26 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-5 Mini scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3.6 Max Preview in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads 40.8 to 24.1.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is SimpleQA Verified: 21.6% for GPT-5 Mini and 52% for Qwen3.6 Max Preview.
- GPT-5 Mini is cheaper at $0.25 / $2 per million input/output tokens, against $1.30 / $7.80 for Qwen3.6 Max Preview.
- GPT-5 Mini accepts more context: 400K tokens versus 262K.
Side by side
| GPT-5 Mini | Qwen3.6 Max Preview | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 41.7 | 51.1 |
| Released | 2025-08-07 | 2026-04-20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 400K | 262K |
| Max output | 128K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.25 | $1.30 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $2 | $7.80 |
| Results tracked | 60 | 29 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
GPT-5 Mini: 40.0 (#134), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 48.6 (#50)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | 64.7% | 76.7% |
| LMArena Coding | 1406 | 1472 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 59.8% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1482 |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 39.7% | — |
| SciCode | 39.2% | — |
| WeirdML | 52.7% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 799.77 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.38 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
GPT-5 Mini: 31.0 (#64), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: —
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | -31.18 | 4,254 |
| Terminal-Bench | 34.8% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 55.5% | — |
Reasoning Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
GPT-5 Mini: 24.1 (#153), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 40.8 (#47)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 30% | 20% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1380 | 1457 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 10% | 19% |
| DTBench | 80.5% | 87.2% |
| LMCA | 34.2% | 42.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 145.51 | 149.27 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 4.4% | — |
| SimpleBench | — | 63% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 70.3% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 74.1% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 54.3% | — |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 8.2% | — |
| ForecastBench | 61 | — |
Math Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
GPT-5 Mini: 46.3 (#59), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 52.2 (#40)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 86.7% | 91.1% |
| LMArena Math | 1377 | 1465 |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 27.2% | 23.1% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 6.3% | 4.2% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 46.7% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 12.2% | — |
| ProofBench | 9% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 72.2% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 97.8% | — |
Knowledge Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
GPT-5 Mini: 45.5 (#80), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 57.6 (#35)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 75% | 87.4% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 21.6% | 52% |
| LMArena Expert | 1377 | 1476 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 19.4% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 83.5% | — |
| Confabulations | 13.3% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.9% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 75.6% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
GPT-5 Mini: 35.0 (#80), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: —
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1202 | — |
| VPCT | 40.2% | — |
Multilingual Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
GPT-5 Mini: 49.1 (#131), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 54.3 (#46)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1363 | 1436 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1387 | 1487 |
| LMArena French | 1385 | 1449 |
| LMArena Russian | 1362 | 1444 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1355 | 1452 |
| LMArena German | 1366 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1342 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1306 | — |
Instruction Following Too close to call
GPT-5 Mini: 76.4 (#43), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 75.8 (#51)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1357 | 1437 |
| IFEval | 92.7% | — |
Long Context Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
GPT-5 Mini: 41.9 (#127), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 44.6 (#59)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1355 | 1457 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 69.4% | — |
Writing & Preference Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
GPT-5 Mini: 55.4 (#143), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 64.0 (#58)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Mini | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1373 | 1447 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1325 | 1435 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1363 | 1456 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 83.1% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1313 | — |
| WildBench | 85.5% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is GPT-5 Mini better than Qwen3.6 Max Preview?
Qwen3.6 Max Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 51.1 to 41.7 on the Noometry Index. GPT-5 Mini costs 4.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Max Preview's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, GPT-5 Mini or Qwen3.6 Max Preview?
GPT-5 Mini is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $2 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Max Preview lists at $1.30 and $7.80.
Is GPT-5 Mini or Qwen3.6 Max Preview better for coding?
Qwen3.6 Max Preview scores higher on coding benchmarks: 48.6 versus 40.0 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
GPT-5 Mini does, with 400K tokens against 262K.
How many benchmarks do GPT-5 Mini and Qwen3.6 Max Preview share?
26 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-5 Mini has 60 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Max Preview has 29.