GPT-5 (medium) vs Qwen3.6 Plus

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

Agentic
Coding
Multimodal & Grounded
Reasoning
Knowledge
Instruction Following
Multilingual
Mathematics

GPT-5 (medium)· Qwen3.6 Plus

Quick Verdict

Pick GPT-5 (medium) if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Qwen3.6 Plus only becomes the better choice if instruction following is the priority or you need the larger 1M context window.

GPT-5 (medium) is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 76 to 69. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

GPT-5 (medium)'s sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 82.1 against 62. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is LongBench v2, 81% to 62%. Qwen3.6 Plus does hit back in instruction following, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Qwen3.6 Plus gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 128K for GPT-5 (medium).

Operational tradeoffs

PricePricing unavailableFree*
Speed83 t/sN/A
TTFT36.28sN/A
Context128K1M

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.

BenchmarkGPT-5 (medium)Qwen3.6 Plus
AgenticGPT-5 (medium) wins
Terminal-Bench 2.077%61.6%
BrowseComp78%
OSWorld-Verified72%62.5%
Claw-Eval58.7%
QwenClawBench57.2%
QwenWebBench1502
TAU3-Bench70.7%
VITA-Bench44.3%
DeepPlanning41.5%
Toolathlon39.8%
MCP Atlas48.2%
MCP-Tasks74.1%
WideResearch74.3%
CodingGPT-5 (medium) wins
HumanEval83%
SWE-bench Verified67%78.8%
LiveCodeBench60%
SWE-bench Pro72%56.6%
SWE Multilingual73.8%
LiveCodeBench v687.1%
NL2Repo37.9%
Multimodal & GroundedGPT-5 (medium) wins
MMMU-Pro89%78.8%
OfficeQA Pro87%
MMMU86.0%
RealWorldQA85.4%
OmniDocBench 1.591.2%
Video-MME (with subtitle)87.8%
Video-MME (w/o subtitle)84.2%
MathVision88.0%
We-Math89.0%
DynaMath88.0%
MStar83.3%
SimpleVQA67.3%
ChatCVQA81.5%
MMLongBench-Doc62.0%
CC-OCR83.4%
AI2D_TEST94.4%
CountBench97.6%
RefCOCO (avg)93.5%
ODINW1351.8%
ERQA65.7%
VideoMMMU84.0%
MLVU (M-Avg)86.7%
ScreenSpot Pro68.2%
ReasoningGPT-5 (medium) wins
MuSR85%
BBH92%
LongBench v281%62%
MRCRv281%
AI-Needle68.3%
KnowledgeGPT-5 (medium) wins
MMLU91%
GPQA89%90.4%
SuperGPQA87%71.6%
MMLU-Pro81%88.5%
HLE27%28.8%
FrontierScience82%
SimpleQA87%
MMLU-Redux94.5%
C-Eval93.3%
Instruction FollowingQwen3.6 Plus wins
IFEval88%94.3%
IFBench74.2%
MultilingualGPT-5 (medium) wins
MGSM90%
MMLU-ProX87%84.7%
NOVA-6357.9%
INCLUDE85.1%
PolyMath77.4%
VWT2k-lite84.3%
MAXIFE88.2%
Mathematics
AIME 202393%
AIME 202495%
AIME 202594%
HMMT Feb 202389%
HMMT Feb 202491%
HMMT Feb 202590%
BRUMO 202592%
MATH-50092%
AIME2695.3%
HMMT Feb 202596.7%
HMMT Nov 202594.6%
HMMT Feb 202687.8%
MMAnswerBench83.8%
Frequently Asked Questions (8)

Which is better, GPT-5 (medium) or Qwen3.6 Plus?

GPT-5 (medium) is ahead overall, 76 to 69. The biggest single separator in this matchup is LongBench v2, where the scores are 81% and 62%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, GPT-5 (medium) or Qwen3.6 Plus?

GPT-5 (medium) has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 71.2 versus 66. Inside this category, SuperGPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, GPT-5 (medium) or Qwen3.6 Plus?

GPT-5 (medium) has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 66.2 versus 64.9. Inside this category, SWE-bench Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, GPT-5 (medium) or Qwen3.6 Plus?

GPT-5 (medium) has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 82.1 versus 62. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, GPT-5 (medium) or Qwen3.6 Plus?

GPT-5 (medium) has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 75.5 versus 62. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, GPT-5 (medium) or Qwen3.6 Plus?

GPT-5 (medium) has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 88.1 versus 78.8. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, GPT-5 (medium) or Qwen3.6 Plus?

Qwen3.6 Plus has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 94.3 versus 88. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, GPT-5 (medium) or Qwen3.6 Plus?

GPT-5 (medium) has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 88.1 versus 84.7. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: April 2, 2026

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