# GPT-4.1 mini vs Qwen3.5-9B

> GPT-4.1 mini and Qwen3.5-9B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (33.6 vs 33.8), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gpt-4-1-mini-vs-qwen3-5-9b
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 8

## Summary

- They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-4.1 mini scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3.5-9B in 4 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in agentic & tool use, where GPT-4.1 mini leads 33.3 to 14.5.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 44.7% for GPT-4.1 mini and 61.7% for Qwen3.5-9B.
- Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.40 / $1.60 for GPT-4.1 mini.
- GPT-4.1 mini accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 262K.
- Qwen3.5-9B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 33.6 | 33.8 |
| Rank | 240 | 236 |
| Context | 1.05M | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.40 | $0.10 |
| Output $/M | $1.60 | $0.15 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- GPT-4.1 mini: 30.6 (#293)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 35.9 (#217)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 40.4% | 27.5% |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 23.9% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | 32.4% | — |
| WeirdML | 37.6% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 48.9% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1367 | — |
| CadEval | 16% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- GPT-4.1 mini: 33.3 (#55)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 14.5 (#151)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 9.2% |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 50.5% | — |

## Reasoning

- GPT-4.1 mini: 10.8 (#340)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 23.1 (#182)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0% | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 7% | 12% |
| DTBench | 68.8% | 71.2% |
| LMCA | 21.1% | 24.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 135.01 | 139.46 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 48.6% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 3.5% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1349 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 7% | — |

## Math

- GPT-4.1 mini: 24.1 (#270)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 34.8 (#192)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 44.7% | 61.7% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 6.7% | — |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 48.5% |
| Omni-MATH | 49.1% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1343 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 87.3% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 4.5% | — |

## Knowledge

- GPT-4.1 mini: 34.7 (#194)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#84)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 65.8% | 79% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 12.7% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 78.3% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 61.4% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1338 | — |

## Multimodal

- GPT-4.1 mini: 35.8 (#82)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1181 | — |

## Multilingual

- GPT-4.1 mini: 45.7 (#166)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1318 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1329 | — |
| LMArena French | 1358 | — |
| LMArena German | 1351 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1290 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1298 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1324 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1319 | — |

## Instruction Following

- GPT-4.1 mini: 73.7 (#118)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 90.4% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1333 | — |

## Long Context

- GPT-4.1 mini: 31.8 (#275)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | 44.4% | — |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1344 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- GPT-4.1 mini: 48.6 (#199)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1340 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1300 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1147 | — |
| WildBench | 83.8% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1354 | — |

## FAQ

### Is GPT-4.1 mini better than Qwen3.5-9B?

GPT-4.1 mini and Qwen3.5-9B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (33.6 vs 33.8), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Which is cheaper, GPT-4.1 mini 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; GPT-4.1 mini lists at $0.40 and $1.60.

### Is GPT-4.1 mini or Qwen3.5-9B better for coding?

Qwen3.5-9B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 35.9 versus 30.6 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

GPT-4.1 mini does, with 1.05M tokens against 262K.

### How many benchmarks do GPT-4.1 mini and Qwen3.5-9B share?

8 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-4.1 mini has 47 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.