GPT-6 Astra (Medium) vs Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: GPT-6 Astra (Medium) by OpenAI 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
GPT-6 Astra (Medium) scores 38.4 points higher (49.6 vs 11.2) but costs 7.4× as much to run the benchmark ($2434 vs $329; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GPT-6 Astra (Medium) when you need intelligence above 11.2, and Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) when 11.2 is enough.
| Metric | GPT-6 Astra (Medium) | Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 49.6 | 11.2 | −77.4% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 77.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,434.12 | $328.86 | −86.5% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 86.5% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 13.72s | 43.82s | +219.4% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 219.4% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $10.0 / $50.0 | $0.14 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) vs GPT-6 Astra (Medium): 77.4% less intelligence, 86.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 219.4% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- GPT-6 Astra (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
- Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
GPT-6 Astra (Medium)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/gpt-6-astra-medium/qwen3-5-9b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gpt-6-astra-medium/qwen3-5-9b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill