Model comparison

Grok-3 mini vs Qwen3.6 27B

Grok-3 mini and Qwen3.6 27B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (41.0 vs 41.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Last verified . 3 shared benchmarks.

Grok-3 mini xAI

41.0

Rank #130 Confirmed

Qwen3.6 27B Alibaba (Qwen)

41.9

Rank #112 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 3 benchmarks with published results for both. Grok-3 mini scores higher in 2 categories and Qwen3.6 27B in 3 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3.6 27B leads 24.4 to 13.8.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 77.8% for Grok-3 mini and 91.1% for Qwen3.6 27B.
  • Qwen3.6 27B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Grok-3 mini and Qwen3.6 27B specifications
Grok-3 miniQwen3.6 27B
ProviderxAIAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index41.041.9
Released2025-04-092026-04-22
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window—262K
Max output—66K
Input $ / M tokens—$0.60
Output $ / M tokens—$3.60
Results tracked3511

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

Category by category

Coding Grok-3 mini leads

Grok-3 mini: 40.4 (#126), Qwen3.6 27B: 38.5 (#162)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3.6 27B
Aider Polyglot49.3%—
SciCode—37.3%
WeirdML42.6%—
LMArena Coding1380—

Reasoning Qwen3.6 27B leads

Grok-3 mini: 13.8 (#323), Qwen3.6 27B: 24.4 (#148)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3.6 27B
Epoch Capabilities Index140.35146.47
ARC-AGI-20.4%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark61.3%—
ARC-AGI-116.5%—
CritPt—0.9%
Chess Puzzles—22%
LMArena Hard Prompts1374—
Mystery Game Puzzles—7%
DTBench—78.1%
LMCA—34.5%

Math Qwen3.6 27B leads

Grok-3 mini: 40.3 (#78), Qwen3.6 27B: 47.5 (#56)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3.6 27B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202577.8%91.1%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)—35.1%
Omni-MATH31.8%—
LMArena Math1386—
MATH Level 590.9%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)5.9%—

Knowledge Qwen3.6 27B leads

Grok-3 mini: 46.3 (#75), Qwen3.6 27B: 52.4 (#58)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3.6 27B
GPQA Diamond76.3%85.9%
MMLU-Pro79.9%—
Confabulations10.8%—
GPQA (HELM)67.5%—
LMArena Expert1395—

Multilingual Not comparable

Grok-3 mini: 48.3 (#141), Qwen3.6 27B: —

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3.6 27B
LMArena Non-English1352—
LMArena Chinese1387—
LMArena French1357—
LMArena German1350—
LMArena Japanese1343—
LMArena Korean1336—
LMArena Russian1352—
LMArena Spanish1379—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Grok-3 mini: 78.7 (#8), Qwen3.6 27B: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3.6 27B
IFEval95.1%—
LMArena Instruction Following1356—

Long Context Not comparable

Grok-3 mini: 41.0 (#142), Qwen3.6 27B: —

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3.6 27B
Fiction.LiveBench66.7%—
LMArena Longer Query1372—

Writing & Preference Grok-3 mini leads

Grok-3 mini: 52.7 (#163), Qwen3.6 27B: 50.3 (#180)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkGrok-3 miniQwen3.6 27B
LMArena Text1370—
LMArena Creative Writing1342—
Short-Story Creative Writing73.5%—
WildBench65.1%—
EQ-Bench 4—1026
LMArena Multi-Turn1355—

Frequently asked questions

Is Grok-3 mini better than Qwen3.6 27B?

Grok-3 mini and Qwen3.6 27B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (41.0 vs 41.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Is Grok-3 mini or Qwen3.6 27B better for coding?

Grok-3 mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.4 versus 38.5 in the Noometry coding category.

How many benchmarks do Grok-3 mini and Qwen3.6 27B share?

3 benchmarks have published results for both models. Grok-3 mini has 35 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 27B has 11.

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