# Grok 3 vs Qwen3.5-9B

> Grok 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.6 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/grok-3-vs-qwen3-5-9b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 3

## Summary

- They share 3 benchmarks with published results for both. Grok 3 scores higher in 4 categories and Qwen3.5-9B in 1 category; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in agentic & tool use, where Grok 3 leads 30.2 to 14.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 55.6% for Grok 3 and 61.7% for Qwen3.5-9B.
- Qwen3.5-9B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Grok 3 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | xAI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 39.6 | 33.3 |
| Rank | 150 | 235 |
| Context | — | 262K |
| Input $/M | — | $0.10 |
| Output $/M | — | $0.15 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Grok 3: 41.5 (#113)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 35.3 (#213)

| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Aider Polyglot | 53.3% | — |
| SciCode | — | 27.5% |
| WeirdML | 37.2% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1432 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Grok 3: 30.2 (#69)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 14.4 (#143)

| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 9.2% |
| BALROG | 29.5% | — |

## Reasoning

- Grok 3: 13.8 (#322)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 22.5 (#178)

| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 138.34 | 139.45 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| SimpleBench | 36.1% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 61.3% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 5.5% | — |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 12% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1433 | — |
| DTBench | — | 71.2% |
| LMCA | — | 24.5% |

## Math

- Grok 3: 36.2 (#122)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 33.5 (#174)

| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 55.6% | 61.7% |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 48.5% |
| Omni-MATH | 46.4% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1390 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 88.7% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 3.8% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 0% | — |

## Knowledge

- Grok 3: 46.0 (#76)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#77)

| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 75.8% | 79% |
| MMLU-Pro | 78.8% | — |
| Confabulations | 14.2% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.8% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 65% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1420 | — |

## Multilingual

- Grok 3: 52.5 (#81)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1411 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1448 | — |
| LMArena French | 1460 | — |
| LMArena German | 1431 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1389 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1374 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1416 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1417 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Grok 3: 75.2 (#69)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 88.4% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1409 | — |

## Long Context

- Grok 3: 38.7 (#187)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | 58.3% | — |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1439 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Grok 3: 56.0 (#136)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1426 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1414 | — |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 76.4% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1186 | — |
| WildBench | 84.9% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1424 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Grok 3 better than Qwen3.5-9B?

Grok 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.6 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Grok 3 or Qwen3.5-9B better for coding?

Grok 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.5 versus 35.3 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Grok 3 and Qwen3.5-9B share?

3 benchmarks have published results for both models. Grok 3 has 40 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.