Llama 3.1 405B 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

Llama 3.1 405B· Qwen3.5-35B-A3B

Quick Verdict

Pick Qwen3.5-35B-A3B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Llama 3.1 405B only becomes the better choice if reasoning is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 67 to 53. 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 41.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is LiveCodeBench, 37% to 74.6%. Llama 3.1 405B does hit back in reasoning, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B is the reasoning model in the pair, while Llama 3.1 405B 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 Llama 3.1 405B.

Operational tradeoffs

ProviderMetaAlibaba
PriceFree*Free*
Speed29 t/sN/A
TTFT2.19sN/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.

BenchmarkLlama 3.1 405BQwen3.5-35B-A3B
AgenticLlama 3.1 405B wins
Terminal-Bench 2.053%40.5%
BrowseComp58%61%
OSWorld-Verified52%54.5%
tau2-bench81.2%
CodingQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
HumanEval62%
SWE-bench Verified46%69.2%
LiveCodeBench37%74.6%
SWE-bench Pro43%
Multimodal & GroundedQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
MMMU-Pro60%75.1%
OfficeQA Pro65%
ReasoningLlama 3.1 405B wins
MuSR66%
BBH82%
LongBench v268%59%
MRCRv265%
KnowledgeQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
MMLU70%
GPQA70%84.2%
SuperGPQA68%63.4%
MMLU-Pro71%85.3%
HLE7%
FrontierScience65%
SimpleQA68%
Instruction FollowingQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
IFEval86%91.9%
MultilingualQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
MGSM84%
MMLU-ProX78%81%
Mathematics
AIME 202370%
AIME 202472%
AIME 202571%
HMMT Feb 202366%
HMMT Feb 202468%
HMMT Feb 202567%
BRUMO 202569%
MATH-50082%
Frequently Asked Questions (8)

Which is better, Llama 3.1 405B or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B is ahead overall, 67 to 53. The biggest single separator in this matchup is LiveCodeBench, where the scores are 37% and 74.6%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Llama 3.1 405B or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.3 versus 54.3. Inside this category, MMLU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Llama 3.1 405B or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 72.6 versus 41.4. Inside this category, LiveCodeBench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Llama 3.1 405B or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Llama 3.1 405B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 66.5 versus 59. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Llama 3.1 405B or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Llama 3.1 405B has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 53.9 versus 50.5. 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, Llama 3.1 405B or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 75.1 versus 62.3. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Llama 3.1 405B or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 91.9 versus 86. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Llama 3.1 405B or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 81 versus 80.1. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 31, 2026

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