Head-to-head comparison across 7 benchmark categories
Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning)
77
Qwen3.6 Plus
69
Pick Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning) if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Qwen3.6 Plus only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority or you need the larger 1M context window.
Agentic
+8.0 difference
Coding
+3.7 difference
Reasoning
+20.0 difference
Knowledge
+5.5 difference
Multilingual
+3.1 difference
Multimodal
+8.0 difference
Inst. Following
+5.3 difference
Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning)
Qwen3.6 Plus
$0 / $0
$0 / $0
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
128K
1M
Pick Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning) if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Qwen3.6 Plus only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority or you need the larger 1M context window.
Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning) is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 77 to 69. 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 82 against 62. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Verified, 60% to 78.8%. Qwen3.6 Plus does hit back in multimodal & grounded, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
Qwen3.6 Plus gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 128K for Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning).
Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning) is ahead overall, 77 to 69. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Verified, where the scores are 60% and 78.8%.
Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning) has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 71.5 versus 66. Inside this category, SuperGPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Qwen3.6 Plus has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 64.9 versus 61.2. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning) has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 82 versus 62. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning) has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 70 versus 62. Inside this category, OSWorld-Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Qwen3.6 Plus has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 78.8 versus 70.8. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Qwen3.6 Plus has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 94.3 versus 89. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Qwen3.5 397B (Reasoning) has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 87.8 versus 84.7. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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