Grok 3 Mini vs Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning)

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

Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning) is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 46 to 23. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning)'s sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 85.9 against 21.7. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SimpleQA, 21.7% to 87%.

Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while Grok 3 Mini 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.

Quick Verdict

Pick Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning) if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Grok 3 Mini only becomes the better choice if you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Agentic

Coming soon

Benchmark data for this category is coming soon.

Coding

Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning)

Grok 3 Mini

41.5

Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning)

83

41.5%
LiveCodeBench
Coming soon
Coming soon
HumanEval
83%

Multimodal & Grounded

Coming soon

Benchmark data for this category is coming soon.

Reasoning

Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning)

Grok 3 Mini

21.7

Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning)

85.9

21.7%
SimpleQA
87%
Coming soon
MuSR
85%

Knowledge

Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning)

Grok 3 Mini

74.1

Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning)

88

66.2%
GPQA
89%
78.9%
MMLU-Pro
Coming soon
Coming soon
MMLU
91%
Coming soon
SuperGPQA
87%
Coming soon
OpenBookQA
85%

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 (Reasoning)

Grok 3 Mini

39.7

Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning)

92

39.7%
AIME 2024
95%
Coming soon
AIME 2023
93%
Coming soon
AIME 2025
94%
Coming soon
HMMT Feb 2023
89%
Coming soon
HMMT Feb 2024
91%
Coming soon
HMMT Feb 2025
90%
Coming soon
BRUMO 2025
92%

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning) is ahead overall, 46 to 23. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SimpleQA, where the scores are 21.7% and 87%.

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

Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning) has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 88 versus 74.1. 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 (Reasoning)?

Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning) has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 83 versus 41.5. Grok 3 Mini stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.

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

Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning) has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 92 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 (Reasoning)?

Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning) has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 85.9 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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