# Grok-3 mini vs Qwen3.8 27B

> Qwen3.8 27B is the stronger model overall, scoring 45.3 to 41.0 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/grok-3-mini-vs-qwen3-8-27b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 18

## Summary

- They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Grok-3 mini scores higher in 3 categories and Qwen3.8 27B in 5 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3.8 27B leads 31.5 to 13.8.
- Qwen3.8 27B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.8 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | xAI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 41.0 | 45.3 |
| Rank | 130 | 64 |
| Context | — | 262K |
| Input $/M | — | $0.99 |
| Output $/M | — | $1.49 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Grok-3 mini: 40.4 (#126)
- Qwen3.8 27B: 50.3 (#42)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.8 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1380 | 1487 |
| Aider Polyglot | 49.3% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1592 |
| SciCode | — | 46.6% |
| WeirdML | 42.6% | — |

## Reasoning

- Grok-3 mini: 13.8 (#323)
- Qwen3.8 27B: 31.5 (#71)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.8 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1374 | 1459 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 140.35 | 149.38 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0.4% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 61.3% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 54.5% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 16.5% | — |
| CritPt | — | 5.4% |
| DTBench | — | 88% |
| LMCA | — | 41.4% |
| Surface Evolver Bench | — | 45% |

## Math

- Grok-3 mini: 40.3 (#78)
- Qwen3.8 27B: 35.7 (#139)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.8 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1386 | 1453 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 77.8% | — |
| ProofBench | — | 16% |
| Omni-MATH | 31.8% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 90.9% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 5.9% | — |

## Knowledge

- Grok-3 mini: 46.3 (#75)
- Qwen3.8 27B: 40.9 (#105)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.8 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1395 | 1482 |
| GPQA Diamond | 76.3% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 79.9% | — |
| Confabulations | 10.8% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 67.5% | — |

## Multimodal

- Grok-3 mini: —
- Qwen3.8 27B: 40.5 (#36)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.8 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1270 |

## Multilingual

- Grok-3 mini: 48.3 (#141)
- Qwen3.8 27B: 54.0 (#54)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.8 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1352 | 1431 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1387 | 1504 |
| LMArena French | 1357 | 1468 |
| LMArena German | 1350 | 1435 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1343 | 1392 |
| LMArena Korean | 1336 | 1389 |
| LMArena Russian | 1352 | 1421 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1379 | 1444 |

## Instruction Following

- Grok-3 mini: 78.7 (#8)
- Qwen3.8 27B: 75.8 (#54)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.8 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1356 | 1436 |
| IFEval | 95.1% | — |

## Long Context

- Grok-3 mini: 41.0 (#142)
- Qwen3.8 27B: 44.3 (#66)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.8 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1372 | 1448 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 66.7% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Grok-3 mini: 52.7 (#163)
- Qwen3.8 27B: 65.9 (#41)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Qwen3.8 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1370 | 1441 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1342 | 1382 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1355 | 1443 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 73.5% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1671 |
| WildBench | 65.1% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Grok-3 mini better than Qwen3.8 27B?

Qwen3.8 27B is the stronger model overall, scoring 45.3 to 41.0 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Grok-3 mini or Qwen3.8 27B better for coding?

Qwen3.8 27B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 50.3 versus 40.4 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Grok-3 mini and Qwen3.8 27B share?

18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Grok-3 mini has 35 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.8 27B has 28.