DeepSeek-R1 vs Qwen3.5-27B

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

Agentic
Coding
Multimodal & Grounded
Reasoning
Knowledge
Instruction Following
Multilingual
Mathematics

DeepSeek-R1· Qwen3.5-27B

Quick Verdict

Pick Qwen3.5-27B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. DeepSeek-R1 only becomes the better choice if its workflow or ecosystem matters more than the raw scoreboard.

Qwen3.5-27B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 70 to 45. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Qwen3.5-27B's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 77.6 against 28.3. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is LiveCodeBench, 19% to 80.7%.

DeepSeek-R1 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $0.55 input / $2.19 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.00 input / $0.00 output per 1M tokens for Qwen3.5-27B. That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. Qwen3.5-27B gives you the larger context window at 262K, compared with 128K for DeepSeek-R1.

Operational tradeoffs

Price$0.55 / $2.19Free*
SpeedN/AN/A
TTFTN/AN/A
Context128K262K

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.

BenchmarkDeepSeek-R1Qwen3.5-27B
AgenticQwen3.5-27B wins
Terminal-Bench 2.042%41.6%
BrowseComp49%61%
OSWorld-Verified44%56.2%
tau2-bench79%
CodingQwen3.5-27B wins
HumanEval92%
SWE-bench Verified49.2%72.4%
LiveCodeBench19%80.7%
SWE-bench Pro25%
Multimodal & GroundedQwen3.5-27B wins
MMMU-Pro43%75%
OfficeQA Pro53%
ReasoningQwen3.5-27B wins
MuSR40%
BBH66%
LongBench v258%60.6%
MRCRv257%
ARC-AGI-21.3%
KnowledgeQwen3.5-27B wins
MMLU90.8%
GPQA71.5%85.5%
SuperGPQA41%65.6%
MMLU-Pro84%86.1%
HLE14%
FrontierScience44%
SimpleQA30.1%
Instruction FollowingQwen3.5-27B wins
IFEval83.3%95%
MultilingualQwen3.5-27B wins
MGSM61%
MMLU-ProX60%82.2%
Mathematics
AIME 202344%
AIME 202479.8%
AIME 202545%
HMMT Feb 202340%
HMMT Feb 202442%
HMMT Feb 202541%
BRUMO 202543%
MATH-50097.3%
Frequently Asked Questions (8)

Which is better, DeepSeek-R1 or Qwen3.5-27B?

Qwen3.5-27B is ahead overall, 70 to 45. The biggest single separator in this matchup is LiveCodeBench, where the scores are 19% and 80.7%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, DeepSeek-R1 or Qwen3.5-27B?

Qwen3.5-27B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 80.6 versus 47. Inside this category, SuperGPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, DeepSeek-R1 or Qwen3.5-27B?

Qwen3.5-27B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 77.6 versus 28.3. Inside this category, LiveCodeBench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, DeepSeek-R1 or Qwen3.5-27B?

Qwen3.5-27B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 60.6 versus 40. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, DeepSeek-R1 or Qwen3.5-27B?

Qwen3.5-27B has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 51.6 versus 44.5. Inside this category, OSWorld-Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, DeepSeek-R1 or Qwen3.5-27B?

Qwen3.5-27B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 75 versus 47.5. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, DeepSeek-R1 or Qwen3.5-27B?

Qwen3.5-27B has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 95 versus 83.3. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, DeepSeek-R1 or Qwen3.5-27B?

Qwen3.5-27B has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 82.2 versus 60.4. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 31, 2026

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