Model comparison

GPT-5 vs Qwen3.5 Plus

GPT-5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.9 to 42.9 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5 Plus costs 3.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 12 shared benchmarks.

GPT-5 OpenAI

50.9

Rank #45 Confirmed

Qwen3.5 Plus Alibaba (Qwen)

42.9

Rank #106 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-5 scores higher in 4 categories and Qwen3.5 Plus in 0 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in long context, where GPT-5 leads 69.5 to 43.0.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is SimpleQA Verified: 50.1% for GPT-5 and 25.4% for Qwen3.5 Plus.
  • Qwen3.5 Plus is cheaper at $0.40 / $2.40 per million input/output tokens, against $1.25 / $10 for GPT-5.
  • Qwen3.5 Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 400K.

Side by side

GPT-5 and Qwen3.5 Plus specifications
GPT-5Qwen3.5 Plus
ProviderOpenAIAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index50.942.9
Released2025-08-072026-02-16
WeightsProprietaryProprietary
Context window400K1M
Max output128K66K
Input $ / M tokens$1.25$0.40
Output $ / M tokens$10$2.40
Results tracked6915

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Category by category

Coding Not comparable

GPT-5: 50.3 (#47), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Qwen3.5 Plus
ALE-Bench1,162621.92
SWE-bench Verified73.6%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)65%—
Aider Polyglot88%—
LMArena WebDev1418—
SciCode42.9%—
GSO6.9%—
WeirdML60.7%—
LMArena Coding1436—
AlgoTune1.67—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

GPT-5: 33.1 (#56), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Qwen3.5 Plus
Terminal-Bench49.6%—
GDPval34.8%—
Remote Labor Index1.7%—
DeepResearch Bench49.6%—
BALROG32.8%—
LMArena Search1133—
METR Time Horizons69.6%—
Vending-Bench 2—0.54

Reasoning GPT-5 leads

GPT-5: 38.3 (#64), Qwen3.5 Plus: 32.8 (#74)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Qwen3.5 Plus
Chess Puzzles37%22%
Mystery Game Puzzles23%17%
DTBench90.7%80.5%
LMCA40%36.4%
Epoch Capabilities Index150146.78
ARC-AGI-29.9%—
SimpleBench56.7%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark72.7%—
ARC-AGI-165.7%—
CritPt12.6%—
EnigmaEval10.5%—
EBR-Bench12.7%—
LMArena Hard Prompts1416—
ForecastBench61.4—

Math GPT-5 leads

GPT-5: 55.0 (#44), Qwen3.5 Plus: 49.6 (#61)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Qwen3.5 Plus
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202591.4%86.7%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)32.4%21%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)12.5%2.1%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)55.4%—
FrontierMath Tier 422%—
ProofBench18%—
Omni-MATH64.7%—
LMArena Math1407—
MATH Level 598.1%—

Knowledge GPT-5 leads

GPT-5: 56.6 (#43), Qwen3.5 Plus: 46.0 (#83)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Qwen3.5 Plus
GPQA Diamond86.2%84.8%
SimpleQA Verified50.1%25.4%
Vectara Hallucination Rate14.7%10.7%
Humanity's Last Exam25.3%—
MMLU-Pro86.3%—
Confabulations10.3%—
GPQA (HELM)79.2%—
LMArena Expert1419—

Multimodal Not comparable

GPT-5: 46.8 (#13), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Qwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Vision1232—
GeoBench81%—
VPCT66%—

Multilingual Not comparable

GPT-5: 51.4 (#110), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Qwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Non-English1397—
LMArena Chinese1422—
LMArena French1410—
LMArena German1416—
LMArena Japanese1409—
LMArena Korean1360—
LMArena Russian1406—
LMArena Spanish1399—

Instruction Following Not comparable

GPT-5: 73.8 (#113), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Qwen3.5 Plus
IFEval87.5%—
LMArena Instruction Following1388—

Long Context GPT-5 leads

GPT-5: 69.5 (#2), Qwen3.5 Plus: 43.0 (#113)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Qwen3.5 Plus
Fiction.LiveBench97.2%—
CL-bench—19.8%
CL-bench Life—12.4%
LMArena Longer Query1399—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

GPT-5: 63.4 (#65), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Qwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Text1406—
LMArena Creative Writing1365—
Short-Story Creative Writing86%—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1627—
WildBench85.7%—
LMArena Multi-Turn1426—

Frequently asked questions

Is GPT-5 better than Qwen3.5 Plus?

GPT-5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.9 to 42.9 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5 Plus costs 3.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, GPT-5 or Qwen3.5 Plus?

Qwen3.5 Plus is cheaper. It lists at $0.40 per million input tokens and $2.40 per million output tokens; GPT-5 lists at $1.25 and $10.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.5 Plus does, with 1M tokens against 400K.

How many benchmarks do GPT-5 and Qwen3.5 Plus share?

12 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-5 has 69 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 Plus has 15.

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