# Grok 4.5 vs Qwen3.5-9B

> Grok 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 55.0 to 33.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 27× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Grok 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

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

## Summary

- They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. Grok 4.5 scores higher in 5 categories and Qwen3.5-9B in 0 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Grok 4.5 leads 56.1 to 23.1.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 97.8% for Grok 4.5 and 61.7% for Qwen3.5-9B.
- Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $6 for Grok 4.5.
- Grok 4.5 accepts more context: 500K tokens versus 262K.
- Qwen3.5-9B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | xAI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 55.0 | 33.8 |
| Rank | 25 | 236 |
| Context | 500K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $2 | $0.10 |
| Output $/M | $6 | $0.15 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Grok 4.5: 52.2 (#35)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 35.9 (#217)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 54.1% | 27.5% |
| DeepSWE | 53.8% | — |
| FrontierCode | 42.4% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1553 | — |
| WeirdML | 46.4% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1474 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,309 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Grok 4.5: 44.4 (#17)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 14.5 (#151)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 9.2% |
| APEX-Agents | 56.2% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 47.9% | — |
| PostTrainBench | 23.4% | — |
| GBAEval | 65.4% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 14% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1213 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 3,887 | — |

## Reasoning

- Grok 4.5: 56.1 (#25)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 23.1 (#182)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 15.4% | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 36% | 12% |
| DTBench | 96.5% | 71.2% |
| LMCA | 45.2% | 24.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 153.92 | 139.46 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 52.6% | — |
| SimpleBench | 70% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 83.5% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 79.9% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 87.2% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1462 | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 74.4% | — |

## Math

- Grok 4.5: 60.9 (#35)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 34.8 (#192)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 97.8% | 61.7% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 57.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 24.4% | — |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 48.5% |
| ProofBench | 31% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1459 | — |

## Knowledge

- Grok 4.5: 62.3 (#24)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#84)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 93.4% | 79% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 48.3% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1466 | — |

## Multimodal

- Grok 4.5: 37.6 (#72)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1288 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 27.3% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 22.5% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1452 | — |

## Multilingual

- Grok 4.5: 54.4 (#42)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1440 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1496 | — |
| LMArena French | 1456 | — |
| LMArena German | 1446 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1428 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1404 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1448 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1450 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Grok 4.5: 76.0 (#48)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1446 | — |

## Long Context

- Grok 4.5: 44.8 (#56)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1463 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Grok 4.5: 65.8 (#42)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1448 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1442 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1579 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1456 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Grok 4.5 better than Qwen3.5-9B?

Grok 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 55.0 to 33.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 27× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Grok 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Grok 4.5 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; Grok 4.5 lists at $2 and $6.

### Is Grok 4.5 or Qwen3.5-9B better for coding?

Grok 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 52.2 versus 35.9 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Grok 4.5 does, with 500K tokens against 262K.

### How many benchmarks do Grok 4.5 and Qwen3.5-9B share?

8 benchmarks have published results for both models. Grok 4.5 has 52 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.