DBRX Instruct vs Qwen3.5-35B-A3B

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.

Agentic
Coding
Multimodal & Grounded
Reasoning
Knowledge
Instruction Following
Multilingual
Mathematics

DBRX Instruct· Qwen3.5-35B-A3B

Quick Verdict

Pick Qwen3.5-35B-A3B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. DBRX Instruct only becomes the better choice if you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 67 to 41. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 75.1 against 35.6. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 36% to 75.1%.

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B is the reasoning model in the pair, while DBRX Instruct is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. Qwen3.5-35B-A3B gives you the larger context window at 262K, compared with 32K for DBRX Instruct.

Operational tradeoffs

PriceFree*Free*
SpeedN/AN/A
TTFTN/AN/A
Context32K262K

Decision framing

BenchLM keeps the benchmark table and the operator tradeoffs on the same page so a better score does not hide a materially slower, pricier, or smaller-context model.

Runtime metrics show N/A when BenchLM does not have a sourced snapshot for that exact model. The scoring rules and freshness policy are documented on the methodology page.

BenchmarkDBRX InstructQwen3.5-35B-A3B
AgenticQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
Terminal-Bench 2.041%40.5%
BrowseComp31%61%
OSWorld-Verified29%54.5%
tau2-bench81.2%
CodingQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
HumanEval70.1%
SWE-bench Pro48%
SWE-bench Verified69.2%
LiveCodeBench74.6%
Multimodal & GroundedQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
MMMU-Pro36%75.1%
OfficeQA Pro35%
ReasoningQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
LongBench v236%59%
MRCRv237%
KnowledgeQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
MMLU73.7%
FrontierScience52%
MMLU-Pro85.3%
SuperGPQA63.4%
GPQA84.2%
Instruction Following
IFEval91.9%
MultilingualQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
MMLU-ProX46%81%
Mathematics
Coming soon
Frequently Asked Questions (7)

Which is better, DBRX Instruct or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B is ahead overall, 67 to 41. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 36% and 75.1%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, DBRX Instruct or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.3 versus 52. DBRX Instruct stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.

Which is better for coding, DBRX Instruct or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 72.6 versus 48. DBRX Instruct stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.

Which is better for reasoning, DBRX Instruct or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 59 versus 36.5. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, DBRX Instruct or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 50.5 versus 34.3. Inside this category, BrowseComp is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, DBRX Instruct or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 75.1 versus 35.6. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, DBRX Instruct or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 81 versus 46. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 31, 2026

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