Noometry

Model comparison

Qwen3.5 27B vs Qwen3 8B

Qwen3.5 27B is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.9 to 33.7 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 8B costs 2.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 27B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 3 shared benchmarks.

Qwen3.5 27B Alibaba (Qwen)

41.9

Rank #127 Confirmed

Qwen3 8B Alibaba (Qwen)

33.7

Rank #238 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 3 benchmarks with published results for both. Qwen3.5 27B scores higher in 5 categories and Qwen3 8B in 0 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3.5 27B leads 27.5 to 16.6.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is LMCA: 34% for Qwen3.5 27B and 8.8% for Qwen3 8B.
  • Qwen3 8B is cheaper at $0.18 / $0.70 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $2.40 for Qwen3.5 27B.
  • Qwen3.5 27B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 131K.

Side by side

Qwen3.5 27BQwen3 8B
ProviderAlibaba (Qwen)Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index41.933.7
Released2026-02-232025-04
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window262K131K
Max output66K8K
Input $ / M tokens$0.30$0.18
Output $ / M tokens$2.40$0.70
Results tracked2811

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Category by category

Coding Qwen3.5 27B leads

Qwen3.5 27B: 38.9 (#168), Qwen3 8B: 34.0 (#248)

BenchmarkQwen3.5 27BQwen3 8B
LMArena WebDev1358—
SciCode—22.6%
WeirdML39.5%—
LMArena Coding1427—
ALE-Bench349.45—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Qwen3.5 27B: —, Qwen3 8B: 30.2 (#78)

BenchmarkQwen3.5 27BQwen3 8B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—42.6%
Vending-Bench 2201.98—

Reasoning Qwen3.5 27B leads

Qwen3.5 27B: 27.5 (#117), Qwen3 8B: 16.6 (#303)

BenchmarkQwen3.5 27BQwen3 8B
DTBench82.4%59.7%
LMCA34%8.8%
NYT Connections (extended)47.9%—
CritPt—0%
Chess Puzzles—5%
Thematic Generalization45.5%—
LMArena Hard Prompts1414—
Epoch Capabilities Index—136.17

Math Qwen3.5 27B leads

Qwen3.5 27B: 38.8 (#127), Qwen3 8B: 34.9 (#191)

BenchmarkQwen3.5 27BQwen3 8B
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions56.7%—
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025—56.1%
LMArena Math1429—

Knowledge Qwen3.5 27B leads

Qwen3.5 27B: 38.0 (#150), Qwen3 8B: 36.1 (#173)

BenchmarkQwen3.5 27BQwen3 8B
Vectara Hallucination Rate12.1%4.8%
GPQA Diamond—56.8%
LMArena Expert1428—

Multimodal Not comparable

Qwen3.5 27B: 39.4 (#59), Qwen3 8B: —

BenchmarkQwen3.5 27BQwen3 8B
LMArena Vision1241—

Multilingual Not comparable

Qwen3.5 27B: 50.8 (#115), Qwen3 8B: —

BenchmarkQwen3.5 27BQwen3 8B
LMArena Non-English1390—
LMArena Chinese1478—
LMArena French1410—
LMArena German1393—
LMArena Japanese1345—
LMArena Korean1358—
LMArena Russian1390—
LMArena Spanish1407—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Qwen3.5 27B: 73.5 (#119), Qwen3 8B: —

BenchmarkQwen3.5 27BQwen3 8B
LMArena Instruction Following1393—

Long Context Qwen3.5 27B leads

Qwen3.5 27B: 43.1 (#106), Qwen3 8B: 37.9 (#210)

BenchmarkQwen3.5 27BQwen3 8B
Fiction.LiveBench—62.1%
LMArena Longer Query1413—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Qwen3.5 27B: 59.3 (#111), Qwen3 8B: —

BenchmarkQwen3.5 27BQwen3 8B
LMArena Text1409—
LMArena Creative Writing1362—
LMArena Multi-Turn1410—

Frequently asked questions

Is Qwen3.5 27B better than Qwen3 8B?

Qwen3.5 27B is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.9 to 33.7 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 8B costs 2.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 27B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Qwen3.5 27B or Qwen3 8B?

Qwen3 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.18 per million input tokens and $0.70 per million output tokens; Qwen3.5 27B lists at $0.30 and $2.40.

Is Qwen3.5 27B or Qwen3 8B better for coding?

Qwen3.5 27B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.9 versus 34.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.5 27B does, with 262K tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Qwen3.5 27B and Qwen3 8B share?

3 benchmarks have published results for both models. Qwen3.5 27B has 28 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 8B has 11.

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