DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) vs Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) by DeepSeek or Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) scores 0.2 points higher (11.4 vs 11.2) but costs 1.4× as much to run the benchmark ($461 vs $329; both mid-range class). Pick DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning).
| Metric | DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) | Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 11.4 | 11.2 | −1.8% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 1.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $460.74 | $328.86 | −28.6% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 28.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 19.94s | 46.17s | +131.5% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 131.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $4.00 | $0.14 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) vs DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25): 1.8% less intelligence, 28.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 131.5% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
- Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25)Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/deepseek-r1-0120/qwen3-5-9b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/deepseek-r1-0120/qwen3-5-9b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill