Qwen3.5-Flash vs Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct
Qwen3.5-Flash costs 2.9x less per output token than Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct ($0.26 vs $0.75 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; no benchmark has tested both models yet.
- Coding
- 41.1
- Overall
- 50.1
- Output $/M
- $0.26
- Coding
- No data
- Overall
- No data
- Output $/M
- $0.75
Qwen3.5-Flash or Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct: which to pick
Only Qwen3.5-Flash has a coding score, 41.1 on the Vibe Coding Index; Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Compare them on price, context and the boards below.
No benchmark has tested both yet. Qwen3.5-Flash has results on LMArena WebDev, LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) and SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI); Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct on LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run), Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) and AA Intelligence Index. Compare them on price and context instead.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
No call
Only Qwen3.5-Flash has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
No call
Only Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct has a AA Intelligence Index result, 7.3.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only Qwen3.5-Flash has a GPQA Diamond result, 82.8%.
Directional only
Math
AIME
No call
Only Qwen3.5-Flash has a AIME result, 92.5%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only Qwen3.5-Flash has a MMLU Pro result, 84.1%.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Qwen3.5-Flash
Qwen3.5-Flash takes 1M tokens against 262K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Qwen3.5-Flash
Qwen3.5-Flash $0.0002, Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct $0.0006 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only Qwen3.5-Flash has the number, $0.40.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- Qwen3.5-Flash 41.1 from 2 benchmarks, Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- None yet: no category has been tested on both models.
- Widest single gap
- None yet: no benchmark has tested both models.
- Output price
- Qwen3.5-Flash $0.26 against Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct $0.75 per million output tokens, 2.9x apart.
- Context window
- Qwen3.5-Flash takes 1M tokens, Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct 262K.
Benchmark by benchmark
Every board either model has a result on, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale. Only one model is measured on each, so no row names a leader.
CodingDirectional onlySix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index10 boards measured
| Benchmark | Qwen3.5-Flash | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1244 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 83.3% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | 64.4% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 35.3% | Only Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 3.8% | Only Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct measured |
| ALE-Bench | 265.9 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1412 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1416 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena WebDev: React | 1229 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1291 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 33 boards here | |||
IntelligenceDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index2 boards measured
| Benchmark | Qwen3.5-Flash | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | Not measured | 7.3 | Only Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct measured |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 143.5 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index1 board measured
| Benchmark | Qwen3.5-Flash | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| τ²-Bench Telecom | Not measured | 29.2% | Only Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 41 boards here | |||
ReasoningDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10 boards measured
| Benchmark | Qwen3.5-Flash | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 82.8% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 81.9% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 57.9% | Only Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 3.8% | Only Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 82.3% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| Chess puzzles | 14.0% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | 20.0% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1403 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1407 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1409 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 13 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index7 boards measured
| Benchmark | Qwen3.5-Flash | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | 92.5% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| AA Math Index | Not measured | 30.7 | Only Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct measured |
| AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 30.7% | Only Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct measured |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 84.4% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | 18.2% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1407 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1413 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index13 boards measured
| Benchmark | Qwen3.5-Flash | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 84.1% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 84.3% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| CaseLaw (Vals AI) | 56.0% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 63.6% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 72.2% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 67.4% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 33.0% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 74.9% | Only Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct measured |
| SimpleQA Verified | 20.3% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1415 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1407 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1398 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1394 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here | |||
GeneralDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index23 boards measured
| Benchmark | Qwen3.5-Flash | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 42.5% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 70.6% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| IFBench | Not measured | 39.9% | Only Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | Not measured | 33.3% | Only Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct measured |
| DTBench | 82.9% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMCA | 29.1% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text | 1397 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1374 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1343 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1404 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1385 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1445 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: German | 1390 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1369 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1344 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1413 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1400 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1380 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1376 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1393 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1392 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1369 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1347 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.5-Flash measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 25 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
Qwen3.5-Flash costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Qwen3.5-Flash costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Qwen3.5-Flash costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | Qwen3.5-Flash | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Qwen | Qwen |
| Weights | No public weights listed | Open weights |
| Released | February 25, 2026 | October 14, 2025 |
| Context window | 1M | 262K |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.065 | $0.25 |
| Output $/Mtok | $0.26 | $0.75 |
| Coding index | 41.1 | Not benchmarked |
| Independent measurements behind it | 2 | 0 |
| Cost per solved task | $0.40 | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Qwen3.5-Flash better than Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct for coding?
Only Qwen3.5-Flash has a coding score, 41.1 on the Vibe Coding Index; Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Compare them on price, context and the boards below.
Which is cheaper, Qwen3.5-Flash or Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct?
Qwen3.5-Flash costs $0.065 per million input tokens and $0.26 per million output tokens; Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct costs $0.25 and $0.75. Cost per solved task is known for Qwen3.5-Flash only.
Which has the bigger context window, Qwen3.5-Flash or Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct?
Qwen3.5-Flash, with 1M tokens against 262K.
Has any benchmark tested both Qwen3.5-Flash and Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct?
No benchmark has tested both yet. Qwen3.5-Flash has results on LMArena WebDev, LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) and SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI); Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct on LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run), Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) and AA Intelligence Index. Compare them on price and context instead. Data as of October 22, 2026.