Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) vs Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)

Which is better for the money: Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) by Alibaba or Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-27.

Trade-off

AlibabaQwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 12.70
Total cost: $234

AlibabaQwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 21.40
Total cost: $1145

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) scores 8.7 points higher (21.4 vs 12.7) but costs 4.9× as much to run the benchmark ($1145 vs $234; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) when you need intelligence above 12.7, and Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) when 12.7 is enough.

Metric	Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning)	Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	12.7	21.4	+68.5% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 68.5% more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$233.56	$1,145.36	+390.4% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 4.9× more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	21.63s	110.87s	+412.6% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 412.6% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$0.23 / $2.30	$0.60 / $3.60
Input modalities	Text	Text, Image, Video

Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) vs Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning): 68.5% more intelligence, 390.4% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 412.6% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning): what beats it Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.

Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning)Qwen3.6 27B (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/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct-2507-reasoning/qwen3-6-27b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct-2507-reasoning/qwen3-6-27b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill