Phi-4 vs Qwen3.5-27B

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

Agentic
Coding
Multimodal & Grounded
Reasoning
Knowledge
Instruction Following
Multilingual
Mathematics

Phi-4· Qwen3.5-27B

Quick Verdict

Pick Qwen3.5-27B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Phi-4 only becomes the better choice if you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Qwen3.5-27B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 70 to 49. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Qwen3.5-27B's sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 60.6 against 31.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is LongBench v2, 30% to 60.6%.

Qwen3.5-27B is the reasoning model in the pair, while Phi-4 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. Qwen3.5-27B gives you the larger context window at 262K, compared with 16K for Phi-4.

Operational tradeoffs

PriceFree*Free*
Speed35 t/sN/A
TTFT2.02sN/A
Context16K262K

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.

BenchmarkPhi-4Qwen3.5-27B
AgenticQwen3.5-27B wins
Terminal-Bench 2.044%41.6%
BrowseComp35%61%
OSWorld-Verified34%56.2%
tau2-bench79%
CodingQwen3.5-27B wins
HumanEval82.6%
SWE-bench Pro55%
SWE-bench Verified72.4%
LiveCodeBench80.7%
Multimodal & GroundedQwen3.5-27B wins
MMMU-Pro54%75%
OfficeQA Pro38%
ReasoningQwen3.5-27B wins
LongBench v230%60.6%
MRCRv233%
KnowledgeQwen3.5-27B wins
MMLU84.8%
GPQA56.1%85.5%
FrontierScience52%
MMLU-Pro86.1%
SuperGPQA65.6%
Instruction Following
IFEval95%
MultilingualQwen3.5-27B wins
MGSM80.6%
MMLU-ProX60%82.2%
Mathematics
MATH-50094.6%
Frequently Asked Questions (7)

Which is better, Phi-4 or Qwen3.5-27B?

Qwen3.5-27B is ahead overall, 70 to 49. The biggest single separator in this matchup is LongBench v2, where the scores are 30% and 60.6%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Phi-4 or Qwen3.5-27B?

Qwen3.5-27B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 80.6 versus 53.6. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Phi-4 or Qwen3.5-27B?

Qwen3.5-27B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 77.6 versus 55. Phi-4 stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.

Which is better for reasoning, Phi-4 or Qwen3.5-27B?

Qwen3.5-27B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 60.6 versus 31.4. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Phi-4 or Qwen3.5-27B?

Qwen3.5-27B has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 51.6 versus 38.3. Inside this category, BrowseComp is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Phi-4 or Qwen3.5-27B?

Qwen3.5-27B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 75 versus 46.8. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Phi-4 or Qwen3.5-27B?

Qwen3.5-27B has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 82.2 versus 67.2. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 31, 2026

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