Noometry

Model comparison

Qwen Plus vs Qwen3.6 35B-A3B

Qwen Plus and Qwen3.6 35B-A3B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (37.1 vs 37.6), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Last verified . 4 shared benchmarks.

Qwen Plus Alibaba (Qwen)

37.1

Rank #210 Confirmed

Qwen3.6 35B-A3B Alibaba (Qwen)

37.6

Rank #201 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Qwen Plus scores higher in 2 categories and Qwen3.6 35B-A3B in 2 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.6 35B-A3B leads 51.3 to 27.4.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 17.8% for Qwen Plus and 86.7% for Qwen3.6 35B-A3B.
  • Qwen3.6 35B-A3B is cheaper at $0.25 / $1.49 per million input/output tokens, against $0.40 / $1.20 for Qwen Plus.
  • Qwen Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
  • Qwen3.6 35B-A3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Qwen PlusQwen3.6 35B-A3B
ProviderAlibaba (Qwen)Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index37.137.6
Released2024-01-252026-04-01
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M262K
Max output33K66K
Input $ / M tokens$0.40$0.25
Output $ / M tokens$1.20$1.49
Results tracked2014

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

Category by category

Coding Qwen Plus leads

Qwen Plus: 38.9 (#167), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 37.2 (#196)

BenchmarkQwen PlusQwen3.6 35B-A3B
SciCode—35.8%
WeirdML—34.5%
LMArena Coding1328—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Qwen Plus: —, Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 22.1 (#134)

BenchmarkQwen PlusQwen3.6 35B-A3B
Terminal-Bench—23%

Reasoning Too close to call

Qwen Plus: 28.4 (#107), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 28.0 (#109)

BenchmarkQwen PlusQwen3.6 35B-A3B
DTBench81.1%73.9%
LMCA24%29.7%
Kagi LLM Benchmark63.3%—
NYT Connections (extended)—41.6%
CritPt—0.3%
Chess Puzzles—26%
LMArena Hard Prompts1317—
Mystery Game Puzzles—22%
Surface Evolver Bench—44.4%
Epoch Capabilities Index—143.93

Math Qwen3.6 35B-A3B leads

Qwen Plus: 23.3 (#271), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 38.9 (#121)

BenchmarkQwen PlusQwen3.6 35B-A3B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202517.8%86.7%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)—20.4%
LMArena Math1326—
MATH Level 565.3%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)1.7%—

Knowledge Qwen3.6 35B-A3B leads

Qwen Plus: 27.4 (#251), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 51.3 (#68)

BenchmarkQwen PlusQwen3.6 35B-A3B
GPQA Diamond48.1%84.8%
LMArena Expert1328—

Multilingual Not comparable

Qwen Plus: 45.1 (#175), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: —

BenchmarkQwen PlusQwen3.6 35B-A3B
LMArena Non-English1310—
LMArena Chinese1347—
LMArena Japanese1251—
LMArena Russian1323—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Qwen Plus: 68.8 (#181), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: —

BenchmarkQwen PlusQwen3.6 35B-A3B
LMArena Instruction Following1303—

Long Context Not comparable

Qwen Plus: 40.3 (#158), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: —

BenchmarkQwen PlusQwen3.6 35B-A3B
LMArena Longer Query1324—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Qwen Plus: 52.2 (#176), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: —

BenchmarkQwen PlusQwen3.6 35B-A3B
LMArena Text1326—
LMArena Creative Writing1293—
LMArena Multi-Turn1336—

Frequently asked questions

Is Qwen Plus better than Qwen3.6 35B-A3B?

Qwen Plus and Qwen3.6 35B-A3B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (37.1 vs 37.6), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Which is cheaper, Qwen Plus or Qwen3.6 35B-A3B?

Qwen3.6 35B-A3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $1.49 per million output tokens; Qwen Plus lists at $0.40 and $1.20.

Is Qwen Plus or Qwen3.6 35B-A3B better for coding?

Qwen Plus scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.9 versus 37.2 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen Plus does, with 1M tokens against 262K.

How many benchmarks do Qwen Plus and Qwen3.6 35B-A3B share?

4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Qwen Plus has 20 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 35B-A3B has 14.

Related comparisons

Go deeper