Qwen3.6 Plus vs Qwen3.8 Flash
Updated October 21, 2026. 0 benchmarks have a result for both. Coding is ranked on the Vibe Coding Index; every other board is shown as published.
Decision reading
Qwen3.6 Plus scores 37.4 and Qwen3.8 Flash 87.4 on the Vibe Coding Index, but no coding benchmark measured both, so the gap is directional, not a ranking.
Pick Qwen3.8 Flash when output tokens cost 4.1x less.
- Shared results
- 0
- Qwen3.6 Plus only
- 83
- Qwen3.8 Flash only
- 7
- Like-for-like categories
- 0 of 9
Shared results can support a head-to-head reading. Results only one model has describe coverage, not superiority.
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, four public coding benchmarks
No call
37.4 against 87.4, from different benchmarks with none in common.
Directional only
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
No call
Only Qwen3.6 Plus has a AA Intelligence Index result, 27.0.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only Qwen3.6 Plus has a GPQA Diamond result, 87.4%.
Directional only
Math
AIME
No call
Only Qwen3.6 Plus has a AIME result, 94.6%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only Qwen3.6 Plus has a MMLU Pro result, 87.7%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only Qwen3.6 Plus has a Design Arena: websites result, 1243.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
No call
Both take 1M tokens.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Qwen3.8 Flash
Qwen3.6 Plus $0.0013, Qwen3.8 Flash $0.0004 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only Qwen3.6 Plus has the number, $1.19.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- Qwen3.6 Plus 37.4 from 1 benchmark, Qwen3.8 Flash 87.4 from 1 benchmark.
- Widest category
- No category has a result for both models.
- Widest single gap
- No benchmark has a result for both models.
- Output price
- Qwen3.6 Plus $1.95 against Qwen3.8 Flash $0.47 per million output tokens, 4.1x apart.
- Context window
- Both take 1M tokens.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
CodingDirectional onlyFour of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index16 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Qwen3.6 Plus | Qwen3.8 Flash | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench coding | Not measured | 87.4% | Only Qwen3.8 Flash measured |
| LMArena WebDev | 1461 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| AA Coding Index | 54.5 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 86.0% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | 73.4% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 25.6% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | 11.1% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| ProgramBench (Vals AI) | 0.0% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | 53.2% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 43.9% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| ALE-Bench | 670.1 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1467 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1462 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena WebDev: React | 1454 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1463 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena WebDev: from an image | 1472 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 22 boards here | |||
IntelligenceDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index2 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Qwen3.6 Plus | Qwen3.8 Flash | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 27.0 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 147.3 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index9 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Qwen3.6 Plus | Qwen3.8 Flash | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench research | Not measured | 74.6% | Only Qwen3.8 Flash measured |
| LiveBench browser | Not measured | 48.0% | Only Qwen3.8 Flash measured |
| LiveBench long agentic | Not measured | 37.1% | Only Qwen3.8 Flash measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | 40.9% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | 7.7% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | 14.9% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | 32.9% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 97.7% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | $5,115 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 30 boards here | |||
ReasoningDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index11 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Qwen3.6 Plus | Qwen3.8 Flash | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 87.4% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LiveBench reasoning | Not measured | 87.4% | Only Qwen3.8 Flash measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 84.2% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 88.2% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 27.8% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 88.4% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Chess puzzles | 14.0% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | 12.0% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1448 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1454 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1455 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 10 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index5 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Qwen3.6 Plus | Qwen3.8 Flash | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | 94.6% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 93.3% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | 38.2% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1449 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1448 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 8 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index12 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Qwen3.6 Plus | Qwen3.8 Flash | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 87.7% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 84.2% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| CaseLaw (Vals AI) | 51.5% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 61.9% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 74.7% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 68.0% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 36.9% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| SimpleQA Verified | 44.1% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1439 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1442 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1437 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1430 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 5 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index9 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Qwen3.6 Plus | Qwen3.8 Flash | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1243 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1233 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1211 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1228 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1202 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1236 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1160 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | 1115 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LiveBench design | Not measured | 72.8% | Only Qwen3.8 Flash measured |
GeneralDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index26 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Qwen3.6 Plus | Qwen3.8 Flash | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench data analysis | Not measured | 74.2% | Only Qwen3.8 Flash measured |
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 44.9% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 77.0% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Vals Multimodal Index | 51.5% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| IFBench | 75.2% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 78.3% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| DTBench | 81.9% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMCA | 33.1% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| CL-bench | 20.3% | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text | 1436 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1424 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1404 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1445 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1424 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1477 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: German | 1451 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1390 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1379 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1455 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1432 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1434 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1433 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1438 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1439 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1418 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1402 | Not measured | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 20 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Qwen3.6 Plus | Qwen3.8 Flash | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 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
Qwen3.8 Flash costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Qwen3.8 Flash costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Qwen3.8 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 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Qwen3.8 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Qwen | Qwen |
| Weights | No public weights listed | Open weights |
| Released | April 2, 2026 | August 26, 2026 |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.325 | $0.15 |
| Output $/Mtok | $1.95 | $0.47 |
| Coding index | 37.4 | 87.4 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 1 | 1 |
| Cost per solved task | $1.19 | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Qwen3.6 Plus better than Qwen3.8 Flash for coding?
Qwen3.6 Plus scores 37.4 and Qwen3.8 Flash 87.4 on the Vibe Coding Index, but no coding benchmark measured both, so the gap is directional, not a ranking. Pick Qwen3.8 Flash when output tokens cost 4.1x less.
Which is cheaper, Qwen3.6 Plus or Qwen3.8 Flash?
Qwen3.6 Plus costs $0.325 per million input tokens and $1.95 per million output tokens; Qwen3.8 Flash costs $0.15 and $0.47. Cost per solved task is known for Qwen3.6 Plus only.
Which has the bigger context window, Qwen3.6 Plus or Qwen3.8 Flash?
Neither: both take 1M tokens.
How many benchmarks is the Qwen3.6 Plus vs Qwen3.8 Flash comparison based on?
0 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. Qwen3.6 Plus's coding index rests on 1 independent benchmark and Qwen3.8 Flash's on 1. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.