Model comparison

GPT-5 Nano vs Qwen3.5-9B

GPT-5 Nano and Qwen3.5-9B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (33.5 vs 33.8), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Last verified October 12, 2026. 7 shared benchmarks.

GPT-5 Nano OpenAI

33.5

Rank #241 Confirmed

Qwen3.5-9B

Alibaba (Qwen)

33.8

Rank #236 Confirmed

Summary

They share 7 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-5 Nano scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3.5-9B in 4 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in agentic & tool use, where GPT-5 Nano leads 25.8 to 14.5.
The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 81.1% for GPT-5 Nano and 61.7% for Qwen3.5-9B.
Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.05 / $0.40 for GPT-5 Nano.
GPT-5 Nano accepts more context: 400K tokens versus 262K.
Qwen3.5-9B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

GPT-5 Nano and Qwen3.5-9B specifications
	GPT-5 Nano	Qwen3.5-9B
Provider	OpenAI	Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index	33.5	33.8
Released	2025-08-07	2026-02-23
Weights	Proprietary	Open
Context window	400K	262K
Max output	128K	66K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.05	$0.10
Output $ / M tokens	$0.40	$0.15
Results tracked	49	10

Sponsored placements are available on pages like this one. Advertise on Noometry

Category by category

Coding Qwen3.5-9B leads

GPT-5 Nano: 33.6 (#254), Qwen3.5-9B: 35.9 (#217)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-5 Nano	Qwen3.5-9B
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)	34.8%	—
SciCode	—	27.5%
WeirdML	38.1%	—
LMArena Coding	1351	—
ALE-Bench	718.67	—

Agentic & Tool Use GPT-5 Nano leads

GPT-5 Nano: 25.8 (#106), Qwen3.5-9B: 14.5 (#151)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-5 Nano	Qwen3.5-9B
Terminal-Bench	21.8%	9.2%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	51.5%	—

Reasoning Qwen3.5-9B leads

GPT-5 Nano: 16.3 (#306), Qwen3.5-9B: 23.1 (#182)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-5 Nano	Qwen3.5-9B
Chess Puzzles	27%	12%
DTBench	62.7%	71.2%
LMCA	7.9%	24.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index	139.38	139.46
ARC-AGI-2	2.6%	—
Kagi LLM Benchmark	62.2%	—
ARC-AGI-1	20.7%	—
CritPt	—	0.3%
LMArena Hard Prompts	1328	—
Mystery Game Puzzles	9%	—
ForecastBench	59.1	—

Math Qwen3.5-9B leads

GPT-5 Nano: 29.4 (#241), Qwen3.5-9B: 34.8 (#192)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-5 Nano	Qwen3.5-9B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	81.1%	61.7%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)	20%	—
FrontierMath Tier 4	2.4%	—
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions	—	48.5%
ProofBench	12%	—
Omni-MATH	54.6%	—
LMArena Math	1317	—
MATH Level 5	95.2%	—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)	8.3%	—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)	2.1%	—

Knowledge Qwen3.5-9B leads

GPT-5 Nano: 35.9 (#178), Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#84)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-5 Nano	Qwen3.5-9B
GPQA Diamond	69.4%	79%
SimpleQA Verified	11.7%	—
MMLU-Pro	77.8%	—
Vectara Hallucination Rate	10.5%	—
GPQA (HELM)	67.9%	—
LMArena Expert	1321	—

Multimodal Not comparable

GPT-5 Nano: 31.3 (#108), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-5 Nano	Qwen3.5-9B
LMArena Vision	1159	—
VPCT	37.2%	—

Multilingual Not comparable

GPT-5 Nano: 45.3 (#172), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-5 Nano	Qwen3.5-9B
LMArena Non-English	1313	—
LMArena Chinese	1356	—
LMArena German	1327	—
LMArena Japanese	1226	—
LMArena Korean	1269	—
LMArena Russian	1296	—
LMArena Spanish	1360	—

Instruction Following Not comparable

GPT-5 Nano: 75.0 (#79), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-5 Nano	Qwen3.5-9B
IFEval	93.2%	—
LMArena Instruction Following	1306	—

Long Context Not comparable

GPT-5 Nano: 31.3 (#281), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-5 Nano	Qwen3.5-9B
Fiction.LiveBench	44.4%	—
LMArena Longer Query	1312	—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

GPT-5 Nano: 39.1 (#249), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-5 Nano	Qwen3.5-9B
LMArena Text	1320	—
LMArena Creative Writing	1249	—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing	705	—
WildBench	80.6%	—
LMArena Multi-Turn	1311	—

Frequently asked questions

Is GPT-5 Nano better than Qwen3.5-9B?

GPT-5 Nano and Qwen3.5-9B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (33.5 vs 33.8), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Which is cheaper, GPT-5 Nano 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 Nano lists at $0.05 and $0.40.

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

Qwen3.5-9B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 35.9 versus 33.6 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

GPT-5 Nano does, with 400K tokens against 262K.

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

7 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-5 Nano has 49 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.