Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) vs Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) 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 (High) scores 21.4 points higher (32.6 vs 11.2) but costs 13× as much to run the benchmark ($4222 vs $329; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) when you need intelligence above 11.2, and Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) when 11.2 is enough.
| Metric | Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) | Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 32.6 | 11.2 | −65.6% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 65.6% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $4,222.12 | $328.86 | −92.2% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 92.2% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 16.63s | 43.21s | +159.8% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 159.8% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $1.50 / $9.00 | $0.14 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech, Video | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) vs Gemini 3.5 Flash (High): 65.6% less intelligence, 92.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 159.8% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- 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 (High)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/gemini-3-5-flash/qwen3-5-9b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gemini-3-5-flash/qwen3-5-9b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill