Compare / Qwen3.5 397B A17B vs o3

Qwen3.5 397B A17B vs o3

Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 19 results on 3 sources that measured both models.

Qwen3.5 397B A17B
Alibaba · profile
o3
OpenAI · profile
Results compared
19
Shared sources
3

Qwen3.5 397B A17B or o3? The short answer

  • Qwen3.5 397B A17B is cheaper: $1.29 against $3.50 per million tokens, 2.7 times less.
  • Qwen3.5 397B A17B scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 21.4 against 20.2.
  • o3 writes faster: 126 tokens a second against 90.
  • On our business benchmarks, Qwen3.5 397B A17B ranks higher for reasoning and knowledge and sticking to the facts.
  • On our business benchmarks, o3 ranks higher for agents and tool use and writing.

At a glance

Qwen3.5 397B A17Bo3
Price per million tokens$0.55 in · $3.50 out$2.00 in · $8.00 out
Blended (3 in : 1 out)$1.29$3.50
Cheapest host, blended$0.88 (Alibaba)–
Intelligence Index21.420.2
Spring Prompt overall––
Output speed, tokens a second90126
Context window262,144 tokens200,000 tokens
WeightsOpenClosed
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 397B A17Bo3
Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls 65 of 161 13 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 95 of 195
WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality 66 of 187 49 of 187
Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers 72 of 153 91 of 153

Every shared result

BenchmarkMetricQwen3.5 397B A17Bo3
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedOverallArena rating 1,4451,405
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedBusiness, management and financeArena rating 1,4451,426
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedCreative writingArena rating 1,4051,383
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedExpert promptsArena rating 1,4761,449
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedInstruction followingArena rating 1,4341,403
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedOverallArena rating 1,4421,432
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedWriting, literature and languageArena rating 1,4211,396
Artificial AnalysisreportedArtificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score 21.420.2
Artificial AnalysisreportedGPQA Diamond% of questions 89.3%82.7%
Artificial AnalysisreportedHumanity's Last Exam% of questions 29.0%20.1%
Artificial AnalysisreportedIFBench% of instructions 78.8%71.4%
Artificial AnalysisreportedLong-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions 77.3%74.7%
Artificial AnalysisreportedOutput speedtokens per second 89.7126
Artificial AnalysisreportedTerminal-Bench Hard% of tasks 40.9%37.1%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTime to first answer tokenseconds 1.573.96
Artificial AnalysisreportedΤ²-bench telecom% of tasks 95.6%80.7%
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 50.166.8

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 o3?

It depends on the task. Among models available today, on our benchmarks and licensed sources, Qwen3.5 397B A17B ranks higher for reasoning and knowledge and sticking to the facts; o3 ranks higher for agents and tool use and writing.

Which is cheaper, Qwen3.5 397B A17B or o3?

Qwen3.5 397B A17B costs $1.29 per million tokens (three input to one output), against $3.50 for o3.

Which is faster, Qwen3.5 397B A17B or o3?

o3 writes about 126 tokens a second on its usual API, against 90 for Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Artificial Analysis).

Run Qwen3.5 397B A17B and o3 on your own prompt

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