Gemini 3.6 Flash (High) vs Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Gemini 3.6 Flash (High) by Google or Qwen3.5 397B A17B (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
Gemini 3.6 Flash (High) scores 15.6 points higher (34.0 vs 18.4) but costs 1.7× as much to run the benchmark ($1614 vs $941; both premium class). Pick Gemini 3.6 Flash (High) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning).
| Metric | Gemini 3.6 Flash (High) | Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 34.0 | 18.4 | −45.9% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 45.9% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,614.42 | $940.97 | −41.7% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 41.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.26s | 65.10s | +221.3% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 221.3% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.75 / $3.75 | $0.60 / $3.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech, Video | Text, Image |
Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) vs Gemini 3.6 Flash (High): 45.9% less intelligence, 41.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 221.3% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Gemini 3.6 Flash (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Gemini 3.6 Flash (High)Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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