# Grok-3 mini vs Qwen3.5 27B

> Grok-3 mini and Qwen3.5 27B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (41.2 vs 41.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/grok-3-mini-vs-qwen3-5-27b
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 18

## Summary

- They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Grok-3 mini scores higher in 4 categories and Qwen3.5 27B in 4 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3.5 27B leads 27.5 to 13.6.
- Qwen3.5 27B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | xAI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 41.2 | 41.9 |
| Rank | 141 | 127 |
| Context | — | 262K |
| Input $/M | — | $0.30 |
| Output $/M | — | $2.40 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Grok-3 mini: 40.8 (#131)
- Qwen3.5 27B: 38.9 (#168)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| WeirdML | 42.6% | 39.5% |
| LMArena Coding | 1379 | 1427 |
| Aider Polyglot | 49.3% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1358 |
| ALE-Bench | — | 349.45 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Grok-3 mini: —
- Qwen3.5 27B: —

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 201.98 |

## Reasoning

- Grok-3 mini: 13.6 (#334)
- Qwen3.5 27B: 27.5 (#117)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1375 | 1414 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0.4% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 61.3% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 47.9% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 16.5% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | — | 45.5% |
| DTBench | — | 82.4% |
| LMCA | — | 34% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 140.35 | — |

## Math

- Grok-3 mini: 42.1 (#85)
- Qwen3.5 27B: 38.8 (#127)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1386 | 1429 |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 56.7% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 77.8% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 31.8% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 90.9% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 5.9% | — |

## Knowledge

- Grok-3 mini: 46.4 (#81)
- Qwen3.5 27B: 38.0 (#150)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1395 | 1428 |
| GPQA Diamond | 76.3% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 79.9% | — |
| Confabulations | 10.8% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 12.1% |
| GPQA (HELM) | 67.5% | — |

## Multimodal

- Grok-3 mini: —
- Qwen3.5 27B: 39.4 (#59)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1241 |

## Multilingual

- Grok-3 mini: 48.1 (#145)
- Qwen3.5 27B: 50.8 (#115)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1352 | 1390 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1387 | 1478 |
| LMArena French | 1357 | 1410 |
| LMArena German | 1349 | 1393 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1342 | 1345 |
| LMArena Korean | 1335 | 1358 |
| LMArena Russian | 1353 | 1390 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1381 | 1407 |

## Instruction Following

- Grok-3 mini: 78.5 (#9)
- Qwen3.5 27B: 73.5 (#119)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1357 | 1393 |
| IFEval | 95.1% | — |

## Long Context

- Grok-3 mini: 41.0 (#147)
- Qwen3.5 27B: 43.1 (#106)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1372 | 1413 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 66.7% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Grok-3 mini: 52.5 (#169)
- Qwen3.5 27B: 59.3 (#111)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1370 | 1409 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1342 | 1362 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1355 | 1410 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 73.5% | — |
| WildBench | 65.1% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Grok-3 mini better than Qwen3.5 27B?

Grok-3 mini and Qwen3.5 27B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (41.2 vs 41.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Is Grok-3 mini or Qwen3.5 27B better for coding?

Grok-3 mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.8 versus 38.9 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Grok-3 mini and Qwen3.5 27B share?

18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Grok-3 mini has 35 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 27B has 28.