Compare / Qwen3.5-35B-A3B vs Llama 3.3 70B Instruct

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B vs Llama 3.3 70B Instruct

Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 18 results on 3 sources that measured both models.

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B
Alibaba · profile
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
Meta · profile
Results compared
18
Shared sources
3

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B or Llama 3.3 70B Instruct? The short answer

  • Qwen3.5-35B-A3B is cheaper: $0.45 against $0.64 per million tokens, 30% less.
  • Qwen3.5-35B-A3B scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 19.3 against 7.7.
  • On our business benchmarks, Qwen3.5-35B-A3B ranks higher for agents and tool use, reasoning and knowledge and writing.

At a glance

Qwen3.5-35B-A3BLlama 3.3 70B Instruct
Price per million tokens$0.16 in · $1.30 out$0.59 in · $0.79 out
Blended (3 in : 1 out)$0.45$0.64
Cheapest host, blended$0.25 (Darkbloom, FP4)$0.16 (DeepInfra, FP8)
Intelligence Index19.37.7
Spring Prompt overall––
Output speed, tokens a second–80
Context window262,144 tokens131,072 tokens
WeightsOpenOpen
Developer based inChinathe US

Prices are the developer's list price where we have read it, otherwise the typical host on OpenRouter; see every model's price. Intelligence and speed from Artificial Analysis.

Which is better for what

Each model's rank among models available today, for each kind of work, from our own benchmarks and licensed sources. The better rank is in green.

Use caseQwen3.5-35B-A3BLlama 3.3 70B Instruct
Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls 113 of 161 127 of 161
Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge 88 of 195 174 of 195
WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality 105 of 187 165 of 187
Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers 111 of 153 not measured

Every shared result

BenchmarkMetricQwen3.5-35B-A3BLlama 3.3 70B Instruct
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedBusiness, management and financeArena rating 1,4031,304
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedCreative writingArena rating 1,3421,285
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedExpert promptsArena rating 1,4201,298
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedInstruction followingArena rating 1,3861,293
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedOverallArena rating 1,3941,318
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedWriting, literature and languageArena rating 1,3641,292
Artificial AnalysisreportedArtificial Analysis Coding Indexindex score 37.011.9
Artificial AnalysisreportedArtificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score 19.37.70
Artificial AnalysisreportedGPQA Diamond% of questions 84.5%49.8%
Artificial AnalysisreportedHumanity's Last Exam% of questions 21.0%3.6%
Artificial AnalysisreportedIFBench% of instructions 72.5%47.1%
Artificial AnalysisreportedLong-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions 72.0%15.7%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTerminal-Bench 2.1% of tasks 40.8%4.9%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTerminal-Bench Hard% of tasks 26.5%3.0%
Artificial AnalysisreportedΤ²-bench telecom% of tasks 89.2%26.6%
UGI LeaderboardreportedRequested-length error% off the requested word count 17.0%10.0%
UGI LeaderboardreportedStyle adherencescore from 0 to 1 0.330.37
UGI LeaderboardreportedWriting scorescore out of 100 42.626.2

Bold green marks the better value on that metric. Where a source reports ranges that overlap, the difference may not be meaningful; see the benchmark page for ranges.

Quick answers

Is Qwen3.5-35B-A3B better than Llama 3.3 70B Instruct?

It depends on the task. Among models available today, on our benchmarks and licensed sources, Qwen3.5-35B-A3B ranks higher for agents and tool use, reasoning and knowledge and writing.

Which is cheaper, Qwen3.5-35B-A3B or Llama 3.3 70B Instruct?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B costs $0.45 per million tokens (three input to one output), against $0.64 for Llama 3.3 70B Instruct.

Run Qwen3.5-35B-A3B and Llama 3.3 70B Instruct on your own prompt

Benchmarks aren't your data. Try both side by side in the playground, with the cost of every answer.