Grok 4.6 (Medium) vs Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Grok 4.6 (Medium) by SpaceXAI or Qwen3.6 35B A3B (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
Grok 4.6 (Medium) scores 24.6 points higher (42.8 vs 18.2) but costs 1.7× as much to run the benchmark ($1557 vs $896; both premium class). Pick Grok 4.6 (Medium) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning).
| Metric | Grok 4.6 (Medium) | Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 42.8 | 18.2 | −57.5% Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reas… is 57.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,557.04 | $896.39 | −42.4% Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reas… is 42.4% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 34.32s | 46.94s | +36.8% Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reas… is 36.8% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $6.00 | $0.38 / $2.25 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) vs Grok 4.6 (Medium): 57.5% less intelligence, 42.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 36.8% 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 35B A3B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Grok 4.6 (Medium)Qwen3.6 35B A3B (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/qwen3-6-35b-a3b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/grok-4-6-medium/qwen3-6-35b-a3b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill