Model comparison

Grok-3 mini vs Qwen3.5 35B-A3B

Grok-3 mini and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (41.0 vs 41.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Last verified . 20 shared benchmarks.

Grok-3 mini xAI

41.0

Rank #130 Confirmed

Qwen3.5 35B-A3B Alibaba (Qwen)

41.7

Rank #118 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 20 benchmarks with published results for both. Grok-3 mini scores higher in 3 categories and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B in 5 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads 23.9 to 13.8.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 77.8% for Grok-3 mini and 70% for Qwen3.5 35B-A3B.
  • Qwen3.5 35B-A3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Grok-3 mini and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B specifications
Grok-3 miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
ProviderxAIAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index41.041.7
Released2025-04-092026-02-01
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window—262K
Max output—66K
Input $ / M tokens—$0.25
Output $ / M tokens—$2
Results tracked3528

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Category by category

Coding Grok-3 mini leads

Grok-3 mini: 40.4 (#126), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 33.5 (#244)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Coding13801410
Aider Polyglot49.3%—
LMArena WebDev—1254
SciCode—29.3%
WeirdML42.6%—

Reasoning Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads

Grok-3 mini: 13.8 (#323), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 23.9 (#158)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Hard Prompts13741400
Epoch Capabilities Index140.35142.52
ARC-AGI-20.4%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark61.3%—
ARC-AGI-116.5%—
CritPt—0.6%
Chess Puzzles—10%
DTBench—80%
LMCA—29.5%

Math Grok-3 mini leads

Grok-3 mini: 40.3 (#78), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 38.4 (#86)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202577.8%70%
LMArena Math13861404
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions—56%
Omni-MATH31.8%—
MATH Level 590.9%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)5.9%—

Knowledge Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads

Grok-3 mini: 46.3 (#75), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 47.7 (#73)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
GPQA Diamond76.3%83.5%
LMArena Expert13951408
MMLU-Pro79.9%—
Confabulations10.8%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate—10.5%
GPQA (HELM)67.5%—

Multilingual Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads

Grok-3 mini: 48.3 (#141), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 50.2 (#122)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Non-English13521379
LMArena Chinese13871458
LMArena French13571412
LMArena German13501367
LMArena Japanese13431326
LMArena Korean13361354
LMArena Russian13521377
LMArena Spanish13791390

Instruction Following Grok-3 mini leads

Grok-3 mini: 78.7 (#8), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 73.0 (#123)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Instruction Following13561379
IFEval95.1%—

Long Context Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads

Grok-3 mini: 41.0 (#142), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 42.4 (#122)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Longer Query13721390
Fiction.LiveBench66.7%—

Writing & Preference Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads

Grok-3 mini: 52.7 (#163), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 58.1 (#118)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Text13701395
LMArena Creative Writing13421347
LMArena Multi-Turn13551391
Short-Story Creative Writing73.5%—
WildBench65.1%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Grok-3 mini better than Qwen3.5 35B-A3B?

Grok-3 mini and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (41.0 vs 41.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Is Grok-3 mini or Qwen3.5 35B-A3B better for coding?

Grok-3 mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.4 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.

How many benchmarks do Grok-3 mini and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B share?

20 benchmarks have published results for both models. Grok-3 mini has 35 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B has 28.

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