Model comparison
Qwen3-30B-A3B vs Qwen3.5-9B
Qwen3-30B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.9 to 33.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 1.9× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-30B-A3B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 9 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 9 benchmarks with published results for both. Qwen3-30B-A3B scores higher in 3 categories and Qwen3.5-9B in 2 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in agentic & tool use, where Qwen3-30B-A3B leads 29.8 to 14.5.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 70.1% for Qwen3-30B-A3B and 79% for Qwen3.5-9B.
- Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.12 / $0.50 for Qwen3-30B-A3B.
- Qwen3.5-9B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 41K.
Side by side
| Qwen3-30B-A3B | Qwen3.5-9B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Alibaba (Qwen) | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 38.9 | 33.8 |
| Released | 2025-04-28 | 2026-02-23 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 41K | 262K |
| Max output | 16K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.12 | $0.10 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.50 | $0.15 |
| Results tracked | 32 | 10 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.5 (#194), Qwen3.5-9B: 35.9 (#217)
| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 33.3% | 27.5% |
| WeirdML | 29.8% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1416 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Qwen3-30B-A3B: 29.8 (#82), Qwen3.5-9B: 14.5 (#151)
| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 9.2% |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 41.4% | — |
Reasoning Too close to call
Qwen3-30B-A3B: 22.2 (#204), Qwen3.5-9B: 23.1 (#182)
| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0.3% | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 8% | 12% |
| DTBench | 69.3% | 71.2% |
| LMCA | 22.4% | 24.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 139.63 | 139.46 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 54.9% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1398 | — |
Math Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.4 (#157), Qwen3.5-9B: 34.8 (#192)
| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | 47.8% | 48.5% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 70.3% | 61.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1394 | — |
Knowledge Qwen3.5-9B leads
Qwen3-30B-A3B: 41.8 (#105), Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#84)
| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 70.1% | 79% |
| Confabulations | 12.3% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1396 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Qwen3-30B-A3B: 49.5 (#132), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1372 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1433 | — |
| LMArena French | 1418 | — |
| LMArena German | 1380 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1337 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1331 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1370 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1404 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Qwen3-30B-A3B: 72.0 (#142), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1363 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Qwen3-30B-A3B: 31.0 (#283), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | 40.6% | — |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1379 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Qwen3-30B-A3B: 55.6 (#143), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Qwen3-30B-A3B | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1384 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1317 | — |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 75.3% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1378 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Qwen3-30B-A3B better than Qwen3.5-9B?
Qwen3-30B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.9 to 33.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 1.9× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-30B-A3B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Qwen3-30B-A3B 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; Qwen3-30B-A3B lists at $0.12 and $0.50.
Is Qwen3-30B-A3B or Qwen3.5-9B better for coding?
Qwen3-30B-A3B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.5 versus 35.9 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3.5-9B does, with 262K tokens against 41K.
How many benchmarks do Qwen3-30B-A3B and Qwen3.5-9B share?
9 benchmarks have published results for both models. Qwen3-30B-A3B has 32 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.