Model comparison

o4-mini vs Qwen3.5 35B-A3B

o4-mini and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (41.6 vs 42.0), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Last verified . 25 shared benchmarks.

o4-mini OpenAI

41.6

Rank #132 Confirmed

Qwen3.5 35B-A3B Alibaba (Qwen)

42.0

Rank #123 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 25 benchmarks with published results for both. o4-mini scores higher in 4 categories and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B in 4 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in coding, where o4-mini leads 40.9 to 33.8.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Chess Puzzles: 26% for o4-mini and 10% for Qwen3.5 35B-A3B.
  • Qwen3.5 35B-A3B is cheaper at $0.25 / $2 per million input/output tokens, against $1.10 / $4.40 for o4-mini.
  • Qwen3.5 35B-A3B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 200K.
  • Qwen3.5 35B-A3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

o4-mini and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B specifications
o4-miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
ProviderOpenAIAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index41.642.0
Released2025-04-162026-02-01
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window200K262K
Max output100K66K
Input $ / M tokens$1.10$0.25
Output $ / M tokens$4.40$2
Results tracked6028

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Category by category

Coding o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 40.9 (#127), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 33.8 (#251)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Coding13681410
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)45%—
Aider Polyglot72%—
LMArena WebDev—1254
SciCode—29.3%
GSO3.6%—
WeirdML52.6%—
CadEval62%—
ALE-Bench826.17—
AlgoTune1.72—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

o4-mini: 32.6 (#61), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard53.2%—
GDPval25.3%—
METR Time Horizons63.9%—

Reasoning Too close to call

o4-mini: 24.6 (#162), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 24.6 (#161)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
CritPt0.6%0.6%
Chess Puzzles26%10%
LMArena Hard Prompts13511400
DTBench77.6%80%
LMCA26.5%29.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index145.64142.52
ARC-AGI-26.1%—
SimpleBench38.7%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark67.6%—
ARC-AGI-158.7%—
EnigmaEval9.2%—
Mystery Game Puzzles5%—
ForecastBench61.8—

Math Too close to call

o4-mini: 40.8 (#89), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 39.9 (#97)

Knowledge Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads

o4-mini: 43.6 (#91), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 47.8 (#79)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
GPQA Diamond79.6%83.5%
Vectara Hallucination Rate18.6%10.5%
LMArena Expert13431408
Humanity's Last Exam18.1%—
SimpleQA Verified19.6%—
MMLU-Pro82%—
Confabulations15.8%—
GPQA (HELM)73.5%—

Multimodal Not comparable

o4-mini: 40.2 (#49), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: —

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Vision1194—
GeoBench64%—
VPCT57.5%—

Multilingual Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads

o4-mini: 47.0 (#154), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 50.0 (#127)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Non-English13371378
LMArena Chinese13541457
LMArena French13641412
LMArena German13361367
LMArena Japanese13081325
LMArena Korean13121356
LMArena Russian13341376
LMArena Spanish13471392

Instruction Following o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 75.2 (#68), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 72.8 (#128)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Instruction Following13211379
IFEval92.8%—

Long Context o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 45.5 (#33), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 42.4 (#127)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Longer Query13151389
Fiction.LiveBench77.8%—

Writing & Preference Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads

o4-mini: 54.0 (#152), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 57.9 (#124)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniQwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Text13531395
LMArena Creative Writing12941346
LMArena Multi-Turn13501390
Short-Story Creative Writing75%—
WildBench85.4%—

Frequently asked questions

Is o4-mini better than Qwen3.5 35B-A3B?

o4-mini and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (41.6 vs 42.0), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Which is cheaper, o4-mini or Qwen3.5 35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5 35B-A3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $2 per million output tokens; o4-mini lists at $1.10 and $4.40.

Is o4-mini or Qwen3.5 35B-A3B better for coding?

o4-mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.9 versus 33.8 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.5 35B-A3B does, with 262K tokens against 200K.

How many benchmarks do o4-mini and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B share?

25 benchmarks have published results for both models. o4-mini has 60 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B has 28.

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