Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite vs Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite by Google or Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite scores 11.0 points higher (22.2 vs 11.2) but costs 1.1× as much to run the benchmark ($366 vs $329; both mid-range class). Pick Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning).
| Metric | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 22.2 | 11.2 | −49.5% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 49.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $365.63 | $328.86 | −10.1% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 10.1% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.51s | 43.21s | +354.4% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 354.4% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.30 / $2.50 | $0.14 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech, Video | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) vs Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite: 49.5% less intelligence, 10.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 354.4% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite 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.
Gemini 3.5 Flash-LiteQwen3.5 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/gemini-3-5-flash-lite/qwen3-5-9b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gemini-3-5-flash-lite/qwen3-5-9b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill