Head-to-head comparison across 3benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Qwen3.5-35B-A3B
56
Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)
80
Verified leaderboard positions: Qwen3.5-35B-A3B #18 · Qwen 3.6 Max (preview) unranked
Pick Qwen 3.6 Max (preview) if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Qwen3.5-35B-A3B only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you need the larger 262K context window.
Agentic
+14.8 difference
Coding
+4.3 difference
Knowledge
+5.4 difference
Qwen3.5-35B-A3B
Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)
$0 / $0
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
262K
256K
Pick Qwen 3.6 Max (preview) if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Qwen3.5-35B-A3B only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you need the larger 262K context window.
Qwen 3.6 Max (preview) is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 80 to 56. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)'s sharpest advantage is in agentic, where it averages 65.4 against 50.6. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is Terminal-Bench 2.0, 40.5% to 65.4%. Qwen3.5-35B-A3B does hit back in knowledge, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
Qwen3.5-35B-A3B gives you the larger context window at 262K, compared with 256K for Qwen 3.6 Max (preview).
Qwen 3.6 Max (preview) is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 80 to 56. The biggest single separator in this matchup is Terminal-Bench 2.0, where the scores are 40.5% and 65.4%.
Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.3 versus 73.9. Inside this category, SuperGPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 58.4 versus 54.1. Qwen 3.6 Max (preview) stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
Qwen 3.6 Max (preview) has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 65.4 versus 50.6. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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