Gemini 4 Argon (High) vs Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Gemini 4 Argon (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 4 Argon (High) scores 34.2 points higher (52.6 vs 18.4) but costs 2.6× as much to run the benchmark ($2407 vs $941; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Gemini 4 Argon (High) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning).
| Metric | Gemini 4 Argon (High) | Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 52.6 | 18.4 | −65.0% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 65.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,407.24 | $940.97 | −60.9% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 60.9% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 63.19s | 64.71s | +2.4% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 2.4% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.60 / $3.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) vs Gemini 4 Argon (High): 65.0% less intelligence, 60.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 2.4% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Gemini 4 Argon (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
- 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 4 Argon (High)Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
Compare something else
Agents:
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/gemini-4-argon/qwen3-5-397b-a17b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gemini-4-argon/qwen3-5-397b-a17b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill