Grok 3 Mini vs Qwen3.5 397B

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

Qwen3.5 397B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 54 to 23. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Qwen3.5 397B's sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 78.9 against 21.7. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SimpleQA, 21.7% to 80%. Grok 3 Mini does hit back in knowledge, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Grok 3 Mini is also the more expensive model on tokens at $0.30 input / $0.50 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.00 input / $0.00 output per 1M tokens for Qwen3.5 397B. That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone.

Quick Verdict

Pick Qwen3.5 397B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Grok 3 Mini only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority.

Agentic

Coming soon

Comparable scores for this category are coming soon. One or both models do not have sourced results here yet.

Coming soon
Terminal-Bench 2.0
52.5%

Coding

Qwen3.5 397B

Grok 3 Mini

41.5

Qwen3.5 397B

83.6

41.5%
LiveCodeBench
83.6%
Coming soon
HumanEval
75%
Coming soon
SWE-bench Verified
76.4%

Multimodal & Grounded

Coming soon

Benchmark data for this category is coming soon.

Reasoning

Qwen3.5 397B

Grok 3 Mini

21.7

Qwen3.5 397B

78.9

21.7%
SimpleQA
80%
Coming soon
MuSR
78%

Knowledge

Grok 3 Mini

Grok 3 Mini

74.1

Qwen3.5 397B

68

66.2%
GPQA
88.4%
78.9%
MMLU-Pro
87.8%
Coming soon
MMLU
83%
Coming soon
SuperGPQA
80%
Coming soon
OpenBookQA
78%
Coming soon
HLE
28.7%

Instruction Following

Coming soon

Benchmark data for this category is coming soon.

Multilingual

Coming soon

Benchmark data for this category is coming soon.

Mathematics

Qwen3.5 397B

Grok 3 Mini

39.7

Qwen3.5 397B

82

39.7%
AIME 2024
85%
Coming soon
AIME 2023
83%
Coming soon
AIME 2025
84%
Coming soon
HMMT Feb 2023
79%
Coming soon
HMMT Feb 2024
81%
Coming soon
HMMT Feb 2025
80%
Coming soon
BRUMO 2025
82%

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Grok 3 Mini or Qwen3.5 397B?

Qwen3.5 397B is ahead overall, 54 to 23. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SimpleQA, where the scores are 21.7% and 80%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Grok 3 Mini or Qwen3.5 397B?

Grok 3 Mini has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 74.1 versus 68. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Grok 3 Mini or Qwen3.5 397B?

Qwen3.5 397B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 83.6 versus 41.5. Inside this category, LiveCodeBench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Grok 3 Mini or Qwen3.5 397B?

Qwen3.5 397B has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 82 versus 39.7. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Grok 3 Mini or Qwen3.5 397B?

Qwen3.5 397B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 78.9 versus 21.7. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 17, 2026

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