LongCat 2.0 vs Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: LongCat 2.0 by LongCat or Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
LongCat 2.0 scores 7.9 points higher (19.1 vs 11.2) but costs 1.7× as much to run the benchmark ($545 vs $329; premium vs mid-range cost classes). Pick LongCat 2.0 when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning).
| Metric | LongCat 2.0 | Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 19.1 | 11.2 | −41.4% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 41.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $544.74 | $328.86 | −39.6% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 39.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 37.06s | 43.21s | +16.6% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 16.6% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.75 / $2.95 | $0.14 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) vs LongCat 2.0: 41.4% less intelligence, 39.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 16.6% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- LongCat 2.0 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
LongCat 2.0Qwen3.5 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/longcat-2-0/qwen3-5-9b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/longcat-2-0/qwen3-5-9b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill