Compare / Qwen3.5 397B A17B vs R1

Qwen3.5 397B A17B vs R1

Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 21 results on 3 sources that measured both models.

Qwen3.5 397B A17B
Alibaba · profile
R1
DeepSeek · profile
Results compared
21
Shared sources
3

Qwen3.5 397B A17B or R1? The short answer

  • R1 is cheaper: $1.15 against $1.29 per million tokens, 11% less.
  • Qwen3.5 397B A17B scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 21.4 against 11.4.
  • On our business benchmarks, Qwen3.5 397B A17B ranks higher for agents and tool use, reasoning and knowledge, writing and sticking to the facts.

At a glance

Qwen3.5 397B A17BR1
Price per million tokens$0.55 in · $3.50 out$0.70 in · $2.50 out
Blended (3 in : 1 out)$1.29$1.15
Cheapest host, blended$0.88 (Alibaba)–
Intelligence Index21.411.4
Spring Prompt overall––
Output speed, tokens a second90–
Context window262,144 tokens64,000 tokens
WeightsOpenOpen
Developer based inChinaChina

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 397B A17BR1
Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls 65 of 161 123 of 161
Professional workReal tasks from banking, consulting and law, business documents and freelance projects 48 of 51 not measured
Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge 69 of 195 133 of 195
WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality 66 of 187 89 of 187
Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers 72 of 153 110 of 153

Every shared result

BenchmarkMetricQwen3.5 397B A17BR1
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedBusiness, management and financeArena rating 1,4451,388
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedCreative writingArena rating 1,4051,374
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedExpert promptsArena rating 1,4761,402
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedInstruction followingArena rating 1,4341,397
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedOverallArena rating 1,4421,398
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedWriting, literature and languageArena rating 1,4211,382
Artificial AnalysisreportedArtificial Analysis Coding Indexindex score 48.224.6
Artificial AnalysisreportedArtificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score 21.411.4
Artificial AnalysisreportedGPQA Diamond% of questions 89.3%70.8%
Artificial AnalysisreportedHumanity's Last Exam% of questions 29.0%8.5%
Artificial AnalysisreportedIFBench% of instructions 78.8%39.0%
Artificial AnalysisreportedLong-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions 77.3%57.7%
Artificial AnalysisreportedSciCode% of problems 44.8%38.3%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTerminal-Bench 2.1% of tasks 51.3%19.1%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTerminal-Bench 4.0% of tasks 0.0%0.0%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTerminal-Bench Hard% of tasks 40.9%6.1%
Artificial AnalysisreportedΤ-bench banking% of tasks 13.4%6.4%
Artificial AnalysisreportedΤ²-bench telecom% of tasks 95.6%11.4%
UGI LeaderboardreportedRequested-length error% off the requested word count 23.0%18.0%
UGI LeaderboardreportedStyle adherencescore from 0 to 1 0.330.30
UGI LeaderboardreportedWriting scorescore out of 100 50.151.8

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 397B A17B better than R1?

It depends on the task. Among models available today, on our benchmarks and licensed sources, Qwen3.5 397B A17B ranks higher for agents and tool use, reasoning and knowledge, writing and sticking to the facts.

Which is cheaper, Qwen3.5 397B A17B or R1?

R1 costs $1.15 per million tokens (three input to one output), against $1.29 for Qwen3.5 397B A17B.

Run Qwen3.5 397B A17B and R1 on your own prompt

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