Model A

DeepSeek

44.57/100

Supported · Public rank #174

90% interval 25.5–63.7

DeepSeek V3 vs Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Updated August 29, 2026. Public scores include evidence status and uncertainty. They are not guarantees for a specific workload.

Model B

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Alibaba

51.55/100

Estimated · Public rank #122

90% interval 40.0–63.1

Decision reading

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has the higher public score estimate, 51.55 versus 44.57, but the 90% score intervals overlap. Treat that as a lead, not a settled winner.

4 results are shared. Category rows based on different benchmark sets are marked directional and do not name a winner.

Which one for your work

Recommendations appear only when a shared evidence basis or an explicit operating constraint supports the call. Secondary and unsupported use cases stay disclosed below the initial list.

Long documents
Prompts that approach the documented context limit
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has the larger documented context window.
Confidence: documented

Show secondary and unsupported calls

Coding work
Code generation, repair, and software-engineering tasks
Not enough matched evidence
The category averages use different weighted benchmark sets, so they are directional rather than like-for-like.
Confidence: limited
Agentic work
Tool use, computer use, and multi-step task completion
Not enough matched evidence
No shared weighted benchmark basis supports a winner.
Confidence: limited
Chat turn cost
1K fresh input + 500 output tokens
Not enough matched evidence
A complete comparable API-rate estimate is not available for both models.
Confidence: listed-rates
Cache-heavy agent loop cost
200K cached + 20K fresh input + 10K output tokens
Not enough matched evidence
The page does not recommend a cost winner because at least one model cannot fit the stated workload in one request. DeepSeek V3 does not fit this workload in one request. Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has no comparable published API token rate.
Confidence: listed-rates
Repository review cost
50K fresh input + 3K output tokens
Not enough matched evidence
A complete comparable API-rate estimate is not available for both models.
Confidence: listed-rates

What is actually comparable

Shared results can support a head-to-head reading. Results present for only one model describe coverage, not superiority.

2 DeepSeek V3 only

4 Shared

37 Qwen3.6-35B-A3B only

Shared results: 4
DeepSeek V3 only: 2
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B only: 37
Like-for-like categories: 0 / 8

2 categories use different evidence sets. Those rows remain visible for coverage context but do not name a winner.

Category results, on a stated basis

Each row states whether both averages use the same weighted benchmark set. Directional and not-comparable rows remain visible, but they never receive a winner in this template.

Coding

Directional only

DeepSeek V3: 38.9
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: 73.8
Weighted basis: 2 vs 3 rows
Reading: Directional only

Knowledge

Directional only

DeepSeek V3: 72.7
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: 51.4
Weighted basis: 2 vs 4 rows
Reading: Directional only

Agentic

Not comparable

DeepSeek V3: Not measured
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: 51.5
Weighted basis: 0 vs 1 rows
Reading: Not comparable

Reasoning

Not comparable

DeepSeek V3: Not measured
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: Not measured
Weighted basis: 0 vs 0 rows
Reading: Not comparable

Math

Not comparable

DeepSeek V3: 1.7
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: 88.2
Weighted basis: 1 vs 2 rows
Reading: Not comparable

Multilingual

Not comparable

DeepSeek V3: Not measured
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: Not measured
Weighted basis: 0 vs 0 rows
Reading: Not comparable

Multimodal

Not comparable

DeepSeek V3: Not measured
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: 76.3
Weighted basis: 0 vs 2 rows
Reading: Not comparable

Instruction following

Not comparable

DeepSeek V3: 86.1
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: Not measured
Weighted basis: 1 vs 0 rows
Reading: Not comparable

Category averages with the server-provided evidence basis for DeepSeek V3 and Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
Category	DeepSeek V3	Qwen3.6-35B-A3B	Weighted basis	Reading
Coding	38.9	73.8	Directional only2 vs 3 rows	Directional only
Knowledge	72.7	51.4	Directional only2 vs 4 rows	Directional only
Agentic	Not measured	51.5	Not comparable0 vs 1 rows	Not comparable
Reasoning	Not measured	Not measured	Not comparable0 vs 0 rows	Not comparable
Math	1.7	88.2	Not comparable1 vs 2 rows	Not comparable
Multilingual	Not measured	Not measured	Not comparable0 vs 0 rows	Not comparable
Multimodal	Not measured	76.3	Not comparable0 vs 2 rows	Not comparable
Instruction following	86.1	Not measured	Not comparable1 vs 0 rows	Not comparable

Shape of the matched evidence

Only shared public evidence is shown. Sparse evidence stays a ruled list rather than being closed into a radar shape.

Too few matched category axes support a radar. The ruled list below shows only shared benchmark results; positions use each benchmark’s normalized display scale when available.

LiveCodeBench
Coding
DeepSeek V3: 37.6%Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: 80.4%Normalized gap 42.8DeepSeek V3 source Qwen3.6-35B-A3B source
SWE-bench Verified
Coding
DeepSeek V3: 42%Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: 73.4%Normalized gap 31.4DeepSeek V3 source Qwen3.6-35B-A3B source
GPQA
Knowledge
DeepSeek V3: 59.1%Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: 86%Normalized gap 26.9DeepSeek V3 source Qwen3.6-35B-A3B source
MMLU-Pro
Knowledge
DeepSeek V3: 75.9%Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: 85.2%Normalized gap 9.3DeepSeek V3 source Qwen3.6-35B-A3B source

What each workload costs

Three fixed token mixes turn per-token rates into comparable decisions. Each scenario states context fit and whether cached input had to fall back to the published list-input rate.

Chat turn

1K fresh input + 500 output tokens

DeepSeek V3: $0.00082; Fits in one request
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: API rate not published; Fits in one request

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has no comparable published API token rate.

Repository review

50K fresh input + 3K output tokens

DeepSeek V3: $0.0168; Fits in one request
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: API rate not published; Fits in one request

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has no comparable published API token rate.

Cache-heavy agent loop

200K cached + 20K fresh input + 10K output tokens

DeepSeek V3: $0.0304; Does not fit in one request
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: API rate not published; Fits in one request; Cached-input rate unavailable

DeepSeek V3 does not fit this workload in one request. Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has no comparable published API token rate.

Specification differences

Sourced differences are shown directly. Missing facts stay explicit instead of being inferred from a model name or family.

SpecificationDeepSeek V3Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Context window

Maximum documented context; output-token limits may be lower.

DeepSeek V3

128K

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

262K

API model ID

DeepSeek V3

Not sourced

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Not sourced

Cached-input rate

A missing cached-input rate falls back to the listed input rate only in the stated workload estimate.

DeepSeek V3

$0.07 per 1M cached input tokens

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

No comparable hosted API rate

Documented inputs

DeepSeek V3

Not sourced

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Not sourced

Documented outputs

DeepSeek V3

Not sourced

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Not sourced

Provider availability

DeepSeek V3

Not sourced

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Not sourced

Reasoning profile

DeepSeek V3

Non-Reasoning

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Reasoning

Weight access

DeepSeek V3

Open Weight

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Open Weight

License

DeepSeek V3

Open Weight

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Open Weight

Release date

DeepSeek V3

2024-12-26

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

2026-04-15

If you already use one of these models

Deployment change: The models list different providers, so authentication, endpoint behavior, limits, and feature support may change.
Quality signal: Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has the higher public score estimate, 51.55 versus 44.57, but the 90% score intervals overlap.
Workload cost: A complete comparable API-rate estimate is not available for both models.
Context tradeoff: Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has the larger documented window (262K).

Run the same representative tasks against both endpoints before changing production traffic.

Self-host vs API cost

Estimates at 50,000 req/day · 1000 tokens/req average.

DeepSeek V3

API / mo$1,028

Self-host / mo$18,221

Break-even1.2B/day

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

API / mo$0

Self-host / moNot listed

Break-even—

Proprietary model — self-hosting not applicable.

Model the full break-even

Benchmark evidence

The full public result ledger is available for audit without forcing a wide desktop table onto a phone.

Browse raw public benchmark evidence43 rows

Agentic

Terminal-Bench 2.0
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B51.5%
Source
Not directly comparable
Claw-Eval
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B68.7%
Source
Not directly comparable
QwenClawBench
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B52.6%
Source
Not directly comparable
QwenWebBench
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B1397
Source
Not directly comparable
τ³-bench results
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B67.2%
Source
Not directly comparable
VITA-Bench
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B35.6%
Source
Not directly comparable
DeepPlanning
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B25.9%
Source
Not directly comparable
Toolathlon
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B26.9%
Source
Not directly comparable
MCP Atlas
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B62.8%
Source
Not directly comparable
WideResearch
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B60.1%
Source
Not directly comparable
Gert Labs
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B42.65%
Source
Not directly comparable

Coding

LiveCodeBench
DeepSeek V337.6%
Source
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B80.4%
Source
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B leads this result
SWE-bench Verified
DeepSeek V342%
Source
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B73.4%
Source
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B leads this result
SWE Multilingual
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B67.2%
Source
Not directly comparable
SWE-bench Pro
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B49.5%
Source
Not directly comparable
Terminal-Bench 2.0
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B51.5%
Source
Not directly comparable
NL2Repo
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B29.4%
Source
Not directly comparable

Knowledge

GPQA
DeepSeek V359.1%
Source
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B86%
Source
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B leads this result
MMLU-Pro
DeepSeek V375.9%
Source
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B85.2%
Source
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B leads this result
SuperGPQA
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B64.7%
Source
Not directly comparable
C-Eval
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B90%
Source
Not directly comparable
HLE
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B21.4%
Source
Not directly comparable

Math

FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3)
DeepSeek V31.724%
Source
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B—
Not directly comparable
HMMT Feb 2025
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B90.7%
Source
Not directly comparable
HMMT Nov 2025
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B89.1%
Source
Not directly comparable
HMMT Feb 2026
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B83.6%
Source
Not directly comparable
MMAnswerBench
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B78.9%
Source
Not directly comparable
AIME26
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B92.7%
Source
Not directly comparable

Multimodal

MMMU
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B81.7%
Source
Not directly comparable
MMMU-Pro
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B75.3%
Source
Not directly comparable
RealWorldQA
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B85.3%
Source
Not directly comparable
OmniDocBench 1.5
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B89.9%
Source
Not directly comparable
CharXiv
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B78%
Source
Not directly comparable
SimpleVQA
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B58.9%
Source
Not directly comparable
CC-OCR
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B81.9%
Source
Not directly comparable
AI2D_TEST
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B92.7%
Source
Not directly comparable
RefCOCO (avg)
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B92.0%
Source
Not directly comparable
ODINW13
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B50.8%
Source
Not directly comparable
Video-MME (with subtitle)
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B86.6%
Source
Not directly comparable
Video-MME (w/o subtitle)
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B82.5%
Source
Not directly comparable
VideoMMMU
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B83.7%
Source
Not directly comparable
MLVU (M-Avg)
DeepSeek V3—
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B86.2%
Source
Not directly comparable

Instruction following

IFEval
DeepSeek V386.1%
Source
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B—
Not directly comparable

Frequently asked questions

Which is better, DeepSeek V3 or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has the higher public score estimate, 51.55 versus 44.57, but the 90% score intervals overlap. The higher estimate is not a decisive winner because the uncertainty ranges overlap.

Which is better for coding, DeepSeek V3 or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

The current coding averages use different weighted benchmark sets, so BenchLM does not name a winner from them. Read the shared benchmark rows directly and test the models on the same task set.

Which is better for agentic tasks, DeepSeek V3 or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

The published evidence does not provide a shared weighted agentic tasks basis for both models, so BenchLM does not name a agentic tasks winner.

Which costs less, DeepSeek V3 or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Both models do not have comparable published API token rates, so this page does not name a universal price winner.

Which has the larger context window, DeepSeek V3 or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B has the larger documented context window: 262K, compared with 128K.

Related comparisons

Compare API pricing Read the methodology Open the model selector

Last updated August 29, 2026

Watch DeepSeek V3 vs Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

One weekly email when material rank, price, or benchmark evidence changes make this matchup worth revisiting.

Read a sample issue

Join 2,000+ readers.

DeepSeek V3 vs Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Which one for your work

Long documents

Coding work

Agentic work

Chat turn cost

Cache-heavy agent loop cost

Repository review cost

What is actually comparable

Category results, on a stated basis

Coding

Knowledge

Agentic

Reasoning

Math

Multilingual

Multimodal

Instruction following

Shape of the matched evidence

What each workload costs

Chat turn

Repository review

Cache-heavy agent loop

Specification differences

Context window

API model ID

Cached-input rate

Documented inputs

Documented outputs

Provider availability

Reasoning profile

Weight access

License

Release date

Self-host vs API cost

Benchmark evidence

Agentic

Coding

Knowledge

Math

Multimodal

Instruction following

Frequently asked questions

Which is better, DeepSeek V3 or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Which is better for coding, DeepSeek V3 or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Which is better for agentic tasks, DeepSeek V3 or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Which costs less, DeepSeek V3 or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Which has the larger context window, DeepSeek V3 or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Related comparisons

Watch DeepSeek V3 vs Qwen3.6-35B-A3B