Grok 4.6 (Medium) vs Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Grok 4.6 (Medium) by SpaceXAI or Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Grok 4.6 (Medium) scores 21.4 points higher (42.8 vs 21.4) but costs 1.4× as much to run the benchmark ($1557 vs $1145; both premium class). Pick Grok 4.6 (Medium) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning).
| Metric | Grok 4.6 (Medium) | Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 42.8 | 21.4 | −50.0% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 50.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,557.04 | $1,145.36 | −26.4% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 26.4% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 31.56s | 112.14s | +255.3% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 255.3% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $6.00 | $0.60 / $3.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) vs Grok 4.6 (Medium): 50.0% less intelligence, 26.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 255.3% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Grok 4.6 (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Grok 4.6 (Medium)Qwen3.6 27B (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/grok-4-6-medium/qwen3-6-27b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/grok-4-6-medium/qwen3-6-27b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill