Noometry

Model comparison

Qwen Max vs Qwen3.5-9B

Qwen Max and Qwen3.5-9B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (34.7 vs 33.8), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Last verified . 2 shared benchmarks.

Qwen Max Alibaba (Qwen)

34.7

Rank #230 Confirmed

Qwen3.5-9B Alibaba (Qwen)

33.8

Rank #236 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Qwen Max scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3.5-9B in 3 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.5-9B leads 46.0 to 30.3.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 16.1% for Qwen Max and 61.7% for Qwen3.5-9B.
  • Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $1.60 / $6.40 for Qwen Max.
  • Qwen3.5-9B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 33K.
  • Qwen3.5-9B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Qwen MaxQwen3.5-9B
ProviderAlibaba (Qwen)Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index34.733.8
Released2024-04-032026-02-23
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window33K262K
Max output8K66K
Input $ / M tokens$1.60$0.10
Output $ / M tokens$6.40$0.15
Results tracked2310

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Category by category

Coding Qwen3.5-9B leads

Qwen Max: 30.7 (#292), Qwen3.5-9B: 35.9 (#217)

BenchmarkQwen MaxQwen3.5-9B
Aider Polyglot21.8%—
SciCode—27.5%
LMArena Coding1288—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Qwen Max: —, Qwen3.5-9B: 14.5 (#151)

BenchmarkQwen MaxQwen3.5-9B
Terminal-Bench—9.2%

Reasoning Qwen Max leads

Qwen Max: 25.1 (#151), Qwen3.5-9B: 23.1 (#182)

BenchmarkQwen MaxQwen3.5-9B
CritPt—0.3%
Chess Puzzles—12%
LMArena Hard Prompts1269—
DTBench—71.2%
LMCA—24.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index—139.46

Math Qwen3.5-9B leads

Qwen Max: 22.3 (#276), Qwen3.5-9B: 34.8 (#192)

BenchmarkQwen MaxQwen3.5-9B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202516.1%61.7%
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions—48.5%
LMArena Math1275—
MATH Level 567.2%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)1%—

Knowledge Qwen3.5-9B leads

Qwen Max: 30.3 (#228), Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#84)

BenchmarkQwen MaxQwen3.5-9B
GPQA Diamond56.1%79%
LMArena Expert1248—

Multilingual Not comparable

Qwen Max: 41.8 (#202), Qwen3.5-9B: —

BenchmarkQwen MaxQwen3.5-9B
LMArena Non-English1263—
LMArena Chinese1254—
LMArena French1330—
LMArena German1254—
LMArena Japanese1205—
LMArena Korean1142—
LMArena Russian1274—
LMArena Spanish1290—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Qwen Max: 66.5 (#208), Qwen3.5-9B: —

BenchmarkQwen MaxQwen3.5-9B
LMArena Instruction Following1262—

Long Context Not comparable

Qwen Max: 39.4 (#180), Qwen3.5-9B: —

BenchmarkQwen MaxQwen3.5-9B
Fiction.LiveBench66.7%—
LMArena Longer Query1288—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Qwen Max: 47.8 (#205), Qwen3.5-9B: —

BenchmarkQwen MaxQwen3.5-9B
LMArena Text1282—
LMArena Creative Writing1248—
LMArena Multi-Turn1277—

Frequently asked questions

Is Qwen Max better than Qwen3.5-9B?

Qwen Max and Qwen3.5-9B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (34.7 vs 33.8), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Which is cheaper, Qwen Max 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; Qwen Max lists at $1.60 and $6.40.

Is Qwen Max or Qwen3.5-9B better for coding?

Qwen3.5-9B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 35.9 versus 30.7 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.5-9B does, with 262K tokens against 33K.

How many benchmarks do Qwen Max and Qwen3.5-9B share?

2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Qwen Max has 23 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.

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