Model comparison
o3-mini vs Qwen3.5-9B
o3-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.7 to 33.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 17× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 8 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. o3-mini scores higher in 2 categories and Qwen3.5-9B in 3 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in agentic & tool use, where o3-mini leads 29.6 to 14.5.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 76.9% for o3-mini and 61.7% for Qwen3.5-9B.
- Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $1.10 / $4.40 for o3-mini.
- Qwen3.5-9B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 200K.
- Qwen3.5-9B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| o3-mini | Qwen3.5-9B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 36.7 | 33.8 |
| Released | 2024-12-20 | 2026-02-23 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 200K | 262K |
| Max output | 100K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $1.10 | $0.10 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $4.40 | $0.15 |
| Results tracked | 51 | 10 |
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Category by category
Coding o3-mini leads
o3-mini: 40.8 (#132), Qwen3.5-9B: 35.9 (#217)
| Benchmark | o3-mini | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 39.8% | 27.5% |
| Aider Polyglot | 60.4% | — |
| GSO | 1.3% | — |
| WeirdML | 43.7% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 82.7% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1378 | — |
| CadEval | 54% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use o3-mini leads
o3-mini: 29.6 (#84), Qwen3.5-9B: 14.5 (#151)
| Benchmark | o3-mini | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 9.2% |
| Cybench | 22.5% | — |
Reasoning Qwen3.5-9B leads
o3-mini: 16.3 (#305), Qwen3.5-9B: 23.1 (#182)
| Benchmark | o3-mini | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0.3% | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 17% | 12% |
| DTBench | 68.8% | 71.2% |
| LMCA | 19% | 24.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 140.34 | 139.46 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 3% | — |
| SimpleBench | 22.8% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 34.5% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 89.6% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1366 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 7% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 70.6% | — |
| ForecastBench | 59.6 | — |
| LiveBench | 75.9% | — |
Math Qwen3.5-9B leads
o3-mini: 28.1 (#244), Qwen3.5-9B: 34.8 (#192)
| Benchmark | o3-mini | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 76.9% | 61.7% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 18.6% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 0% | — |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 48.5% |
| LiveBench Math | 77.3% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1396 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 96.5% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 12.4% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 4.2% | — |
Knowledge Qwen3.5-9B leads
o3-mini: 38.3 (#146), Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#84)
| Benchmark | o3-mini | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 77% | 79% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 15.3% | — |
| Confabulations | 17.9% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1364 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
o3-mini: 45.7 (#164), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | o3-mini | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1319 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1379 | — |
| LMArena French | 1334 | — |
| LMArena German | 1303 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1286 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1314 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1304 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1321 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
o3-mini: 75.1 (#72), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | o3-mini | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 84.4% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1337 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
o3-mini: 33.8 (#256), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | o3-mini | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | 50% | — |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1343 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
o3-mini: 50.3 (#182), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | o3-mini | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1337 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1286 | — |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 61.7% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1320 | — |
| LiveBench Language | 50.7% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is o3-mini better than Qwen3.5-9B?
o3-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.7 to 33.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 17× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, o3-mini 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; o3-mini lists at $1.10 and $4.40.
Is o3-mini or Qwen3.5-9B better for coding?
o3-mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.8 versus 35.9 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3.5-9B does, with 262K tokens against 200K.
How many benchmarks do o3-mini and Qwen3.5-9B share?
8 benchmarks have published results for both models. o3-mini has 51 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.