Model comparison
phi-3-medium 14B vs Qwen3.6 35B-A3B
Qwen3.6 35B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.6 to 29.7 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 2 shared benchmarks.
Microsoft
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. phi-3-medium 14B scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.6 35B-A3B in 3 categories; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.6 35B-A3B leads 51.3 to 9.1.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 27.6% for phi-3-medium 14B and 84.8% for Qwen3.6 35B-A3B.
Side by side
| phi-3-medium 14B | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Microsoft | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 29.7 | 37.6 |
| Released | 2024-04-23 | 2026-04-01 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | — | 262K |
| Max output | — | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | $0.25 |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | $1.49 |
| Results tracked | 13 | 14 |
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Category by category
Coding Too close to call
phi-3-medium 14B: 36.8 (#201), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 37.2 (#196)
| Benchmark | phi-3-medium 14B | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | — | 35.8% |
| WeirdML | — | 34.5% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 37.6% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 48.7% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
phi-3-medium 14B: —, Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 22.1 (#134)
| Benchmark | phi-3-medium 14B | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 23% |
Reasoning Not comparable
phi-3-medium 14B: —, Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 28.0 (#109)
| Benchmark | phi-3-medium 14B | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 121.23 | 143.93 |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 41.6% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 26% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 22% |
| DTBench | — | 73.9% |
| LMCA | — | 29.7% |
| Surface Evolver Bench | — | 44.4% |
| Adversarial NLI | 55.8% | — |
| BIG-Bench Hard | 81.4% | — |
| HellaSwag | 82.4% | — |
| WinoGrande | 81.5% | — |
Math Qwen3.6 35B-A3B leads
phi-3-medium 14B: 27.3 (#250), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 38.9 (#121)
| Benchmark | phi-3-medium 14B | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 20.4% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 86.7% |
| MATH Level 5 | 17.6% | — |
Knowledge Qwen3.6 35B-A3B leads
phi-3-medium 14B: 9.1 (#306), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 51.3 (#68)
| Benchmark | phi-3-medium 14B | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 27.6% | 84.8% |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | 91.6% | — |
| MMLU | 78% | — |
| OpenBookQA | 87.4% | — |
| TriviaQA | 73.9% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is phi-3-medium 14B better than Qwen3.6 35B-A3B?
Qwen3.6 35B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.6 to 29.7 on the Noometry Index.
Is phi-3-medium 14B or Qwen3.6 35B-A3B better for coding?
They score almost the same on coding (36.8 vs 37.2); test both on your own repository before choosing.
How many benchmarks do phi-3-medium 14B and Qwen3.6 35B-A3B share?
2 benchmarks have published results for both models. phi-3-medium 14B has 13 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 35B-A3B has 14.