# Inkling vs Qwen3.5-9B

> Inkling is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 33.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 23× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Inkling's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

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

## Summary

- They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. Inkling scores higher in 3 categories and Qwen3.5-9B in 2 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Inkling leads 40.4 to 23.1.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 88.9% for Inkling and 61.7% for Qwen3.5-9B.
- Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $1.87 / $4.68 for Inkling.
- Qwen3.5-9B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 66K.

## Snapshot

| | Inkling | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Thinking Machines Lab | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 44.1 | 33.8 |
| Rank | 80 | 236 |
| Context | 66K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $1.87 | $0.10 |
| Output $/M | $4.68 | $0.15 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Inkling: 34.5 (#234)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 35.9 (#217)

| Benchmark | Inkling | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 47% | 27.5% |
| FrontierCode | 14% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1413 | — |
| FrontierSWE | 4.1% | — |
| WeirdML | 32.3% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1464 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 946 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Inkling: 29.6 (#85)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 14.5 (#151)

| Benchmark | Inkling | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 9.2% |
| APEX-Agents | 33.8% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 25% | — |

## Reasoning

- Inkling: 40.4 (#56)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 23.1 (#182)

| Benchmark | Inkling | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 5.4% | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 21% | 12% |
| DTBench | 87.5% | 71.2% |
| LMCA | 37.6% | 24.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 148.54 | 139.46 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 36.5% | — |
| SimpleBench | 50% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 79.5% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1451 | — |

## Math

- Inkling: 31.3 (#225)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 34.8 (#192)

| Benchmark | Inkling | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 88.9% | 61.7% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 33.3% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 4.9% | — |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 48.5% |
| ProofBench | 0% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1479 | — |

## Knowledge

- Inkling: 55.1 (#49)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#84)

| Benchmark | Inkling | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 88.3% | 79% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 40.3% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1465 | — |

## Multilingual

- Inkling: 54.0 (#52)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Inkling | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1434 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1490 | — |
| LMArena French | 1458 | — |
| LMArena German | 1446 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1429 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1404 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1429 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1448 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Inkling: 75.1 (#71)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Inkling | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1426 | — |

## Long Context

- Inkling: 43.8 (#86)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Inkling | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1434 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Inkling: 65.2 (#51)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Inkling | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1441 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1387 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1611 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1226 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1436 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Inkling better than Qwen3.5-9B?

Inkling is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 33.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 23× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Inkling's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Inkling 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; Inkling lists at $1.87 and $4.68.

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

Qwen3.5-9B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 35.9 versus 34.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.5-9B does, with 262K tokens against 66K.

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

8 benchmarks have published results for both models. Inkling has 41 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.