# Qwen3.6 Max Preview vs StarCoder 2 15B

> Qwen3.6 Max Preview has enough public results to be ranked (#36); StarCoder 2 15B does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/qwen3-6-max-preview-vs-starcoder-2-15b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 1

## Summary

- They share 1 benchmark with published results for both. Qwen3.6 Max Preview scores higher in 1 category and StarCoder 2 15B in 0 categories; one gap is clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads 48.6 to 36.0.
- StarCoder 2 15B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Qwen3.6 Max Preview | StarCoder 2 15B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Alibaba (Qwen) | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 51.1 | 37.5 |
| Rank | 36 | — |
| Context | 262K | — |
| Input $/M | $1.30 | — |
| Output $/M | $7.80 | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 48.6 (#50)
- StarCoder 2 15B: 36.0

| Benchmark | Qwen3.6 Max Preview | StarCoder 2 15B |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | 76.7% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1482 | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1472 | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 38.4% |
| HumanEval+ | — | 37.8% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: —
- StarCoder 2 15B: —

| Benchmark | Qwen3.6 Max Preview | StarCoder 2 15B |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | 4,254 | — |

## Reasoning

- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 40.8 (#47)
- StarCoder 2 15B: —

| Benchmark | Qwen3.6 Max Preview | StarCoder 2 15B |
|---|---|---|
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 149.27 | 104.61 |
| SimpleBench | 63% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 74.1% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 20% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1457 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 19% | — |
| DTBench | 87.2% | — |
| LMCA | 42.5% | — |
| WinoGrande | — | 64.3% |

## Math

- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 52.2 (#40)
- StarCoder 2 15B: —

| Benchmark | Qwen3.6 Max Preview | StarCoder 2 15B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 91.1% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1465 | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 23.1% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 4.2% | — |
| GSM8K | — | 57.7% |

## Knowledge

- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 57.6 (#35)
- StarCoder 2 15B: —

| Benchmark | Qwen3.6 Max Preview | StarCoder 2 15B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 87.4% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 52% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1476 | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 47.2% |
| MMLU | — | 64.1% |

## Multilingual

- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 54.3 (#46)
- StarCoder 2 15B: —

| Benchmark | Qwen3.6 Max Preview | StarCoder 2 15B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1436 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1487 | — |
| LMArena French | 1449 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1444 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1452 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 75.8 (#51)
- StarCoder 2 15B: —

| Benchmark | Qwen3.6 Max Preview | StarCoder 2 15B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1437 | — |

## Long Context

- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 44.6 (#59)
- StarCoder 2 15B: —

| Benchmark | Qwen3.6 Max Preview | StarCoder 2 15B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1457 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 64.0 (#58)
- StarCoder 2 15B: —

| Benchmark | Qwen3.6 Max Preview | StarCoder 2 15B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1447 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1435 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1456 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Qwen3.6 Max Preview better than StarCoder 2 15B?

Qwen3.6 Max Preview has enough public results to be ranked (#36); StarCoder 2 15B does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.

### Is Qwen3.6 Max Preview or StarCoder 2 15B better for coding?

Qwen3.6 Max Preview scores higher on coding benchmarks: 48.6 versus 36.0 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Qwen3.6 Max Preview and StarCoder 2 15B share?

1 benchmark has published results for both models. Qwen3.6 Max Preview has 29 scored results on Noometry and StarCoder 2 15B has 7.