# Grok 4.6 vs Qwen3 8B

> Grok 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 56.8 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 8B costs 9.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Grok 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/grok-4-6-vs-qwen3-8b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 8

## Summary

- They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. Grok 4.6 scores higher in 6 categories and Qwen3 8B in 0 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Grok 4.6 leads 61.3 to 16.1.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 99.2% for Grok 4.6 and 56.1% for Qwen3 8B.
- Qwen3 8B is cheaper at $0.18 / $0.70 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $6 for Grok 4.6.
- Grok 4.6 accepts more context: 500K tokens versus 131K.
- Qwen3 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Grok 4.6 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | xAI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 56.8 | 33.3 |
| Rank | 19 | 237 |
| Context | 500K | 131K |
| Input $/M | $2 | $0.18 |
| Output $/M | $6 | $0.70 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Grok 4.6: 58.0 (#14)
- Qwen3 8B: 33.4 (#245)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.6 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 56.5% | 22.6% |
| DeepSWE | 67.5% | — |
| FrontierCode | 48% | — |
| CursorBench | 41.4% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1620 | — |
| FrontierSWE | 25.3% | — |
| WeirdML | 67.3% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1464 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,508 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Grok 4.6: 39.4 (#25)
- Qwen3 8B: 29.9 (#71)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.6 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 65.3% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 42.6% |
| GDP.pdf | 17.2% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 9,047 | — |

## Reasoning

- Grok 4.6: 61.3 (#18)
- Qwen3 8B: 16.1 (#299)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.6 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 19.7% | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | 40% | 5% |
| DTBench | 97.3% | 59.7% |
| LMCA | 48.5% | 8.8% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 156.48 | 136.17 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 67.1% | — |
| SimpleBench | 75.9% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 80% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 87.5% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 30.5% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1445 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 34% | — |

## Math

- Grok 4.6: 66.8 (#19)
- Qwen3 8B: 33.3 (#176)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.6 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 99.2% | 56.1% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 66% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 31.7% | — |
| ProofBench | 51% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1416 | — |

## Knowledge

- Grok 4.6: 63.3 (#18)
- Qwen3 8B: 36.1 (#164)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.6 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 94% | 56.8% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 49.3% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 4.8% |
| LMArena Expert | 1463 | — |

## Multimodal

- Grok 4.6: 43.9 (#18)
- Qwen3 8B: —

| Benchmark | Grok 4.6 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1265 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 33.2% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 40% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1452 | — |

## Multilingual

- Grok 4.6: 53.3 (#67)
- Qwen3 8B: —

| Benchmark | Grok 4.6 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1422 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1479 | — |
| LMArena French | 1458 | — |
| LMArena German | 1425 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1383 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1395 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1427 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1408 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Grok 4.6: 75.6 (#59)
- Qwen3 8B: —

| Benchmark | Grok 4.6 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1431 | — |

## Long Context

- Grok 4.6: 44.4 (#62)
- Qwen3 8B: 37.8 (#205)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.6 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 62.1% |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1453 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Grok 4.6: 62.5 (#77)
- Qwen3 8B: —

| Benchmark | Grok 4.6 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1427 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1430 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1422 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Grok 4.6 better than Qwen3 8B?

Grok 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 56.8 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 8B costs 9.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Grok 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Grok 4.6 or Qwen3 8B?

Qwen3 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.18 per million input tokens and $0.70 per million output tokens; Grok 4.6 lists at $2 and $6.

### Is Grok 4.6 or Qwen3 8B better for coding?

Grok 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 58.0 versus 33.4 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Grok 4.6 does, with 500K tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Grok 4.6 and Qwen3 8B share?

8 benchmarks have published results for both models. Grok 4.6 has 49 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 8B has 11.