DeepSeek V3.1 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

DeepSeek V3.1· Qwen3.5-35B-A3B

Quick Verdict

Pick Qwen3.5-35B-A3B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. DeepSeek V3.1 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, 68 to 35. 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 coding, where it averages 72.6 against 14.3. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is LiveCodeBench, 15% to 74.6%.

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B is the reasoning model in the pair, while DeepSeek V3.1 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 128K for DeepSeek V3.1.

Operational tradeoffs

PriceFree*Free*
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 V3.1Qwen3.5-35B-A3B
AgenticQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
Terminal-Bench 2.029%40.5%
BrowseComp39%61%
OSWorld-Verified33%54.5%
tau2-bench81.2%
CodingQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
HumanEval25%
SWE-bench Verified13%69.2%
LiveCodeBench15%74.6%
Multimodal & GroundedQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
MMMU-Pro35%75.1%
OfficeQA Pro45%
ReasoningQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
MuSR29%
BBH61%
MRCRv248%
LongBench v259%
KnowledgeQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
MMLU33%
GPQA32%84.2%
SuperGPQA30%63.4%
MMLU-Pro53%85.3%
HLE2%
FrontierScience37%
SimpleQA31%
Instruction FollowingQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
IFEval67%91.9%
MultilingualQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
MGSM64%
MMLU-ProX59%81%
Mathematics
AIME 202333%
AIME 202435%
AIME 202534%
HMMT Feb 202329%
HMMT Feb 202431%
HMMT Feb 202530%
BRUMO 202532%
MATH-50059%
Frequently Asked Questions (8)

Which is better, DeepSeek V3.1 or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B is ahead overall, 68 to 35. The biggest single separator in this matchup is LiveCodeBench, where the scores are 15% and 74.6%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, DeepSeek V3.1 or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.3 versus 30.3. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, DeepSeek V3.1 or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 72.6 versus 14.3. Inside this category, LiveCodeBench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, DeepSeek V3.1 or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 59 versus 39.6. DeepSeek V3.1 stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.

Which is better for agentic tasks, DeepSeek V3.1 or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 50.5 versus 32.9. Inside this category, BrowseComp is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, DeepSeek V3.1 or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 75.1 versus 39.5. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, DeepSeek V3.1 or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 91.9 versus 67. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, DeepSeek V3.1 or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 81 versus 60.8. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 31, 2026

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