Model comparison

o3 vs Qwen3.5 27B

o3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.5 to 41.9 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5 27B costs 4.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 22 shared benchmarks.

o3 OpenAI

47.5

Rank #61 Confirmed

Qwen3.5 27B Alibaba (Qwen)

41.9

Rank #127 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 22 benchmarks with published results for both. o3 scores higher in 8 categories and Qwen3.5 27B in 1 category; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where o3 leads 54.6 to 38.0.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is WeirdML: 52.4% for o3 and 39.5% for Qwen3.5 27B.
  • Qwen3.5 27B is cheaper at $0.30 / $2.40 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $8 for o3.
  • Qwen3.5 27B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 200K.
  • Qwen3.5 27B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

o3 and Qwen3.5 27B specifications
o3Qwen3.5 27B
ProviderOpenAIAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index47.541.9
Released2025-04-162026-02-23
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window200K262K
Max output100K66K
Input $ / M tokens$2$0.30
Output $ / M tokens$8$2.40
Results tracked6328

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Category by category

Coding o3 leads

o3: 46.8 (#64), Qwen3.5 27B: 38.9 (#168)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmarko3Qwen3.5 27B
WeirdML52.4%39.5%
LMArena Coding14081427
ALE-Bench933.55349.45
SWE-bench Verified62.3%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)58.4%—
Aider Polyglot81.3%—
LMArena WebDev—1358
GSO8.8%—
CadEval74%—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

o3: 34.5 (#44), Qwen3.5 27B: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmarko3Qwen3.5 27B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard63%—
GDPval30.8%—
DeepResearch Bench45.2%—
OSWorld23%—
LMArena Search1144—
METR Time Horizons65.4%—
Vending-Bench 2—201.98

Reasoning o3 leads

o3: 32.0 (#78), Qwen3.5 27B: 27.5 (#117)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmarko3Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena Hard Prompts14021414
DTBench84.8%82.4%
LMCA39.7%34%
ARC-AGI-26.5%—
SimpleBench53.1%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark67.6%—
NYT Connections (extended)—47.9%
ARC-AGI-160.8%—
CritPt1.4%—
Chess Puzzles38%—
EnigmaEval13.1%—
Thematic Generalization—45.5%
Mystery Game Puzzles29%—
Epoch Capabilities Index146.86—
ForecastBench62.5—

Math o3 leads

o3: 50.2 (#58), Qwen3.5 27B: 38.8 (#127)

Knowledge o3 leads

o3: 54.6 (#52), Qwen3.5 27B: 38.0 (#150)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmarko3Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena Expert14021428
GPQA Diamond81.8%—
Humanity's Last Exam20.3%—
SimpleQA Verified49.4%—
MMLU-Pro85.9%—
Confabulations14.4%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate—12.1%
GPQA (HELM)75.3%—

Multimodal o3 leads

o3: 41.4 (#36), Qwen3.5 27B: 39.4 (#59)

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmarko3Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena Vision12141241
GeoBench74%—
VPCT52%—

Multilingual Too close to call

o3: 51.7 (#105), Qwen3.5 27B: 50.8 (#115)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmarko3Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena Non-English14011390
LMArena Chinese14371478
LMArena French14301410
LMArena German14201393
LMArena Japanese14031345
LMArena Korean13701358
LMArena Russian14061390
LMArena Spanish13951407

Instruction Following Too close to call

o3: 72.8 (#127), Qwen3.5 27B: 73.5 (#119)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmarko3Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena Instruction Following13681393
IFEval86.9%—

Long Context o3 leads

o3: 53.3 (#6), Qwen3.5 27B: 43.1 (#106)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmarko3Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena Longer Query13721413
Fiction.LiveBench88.9%—
CL-bench17.8%—

Writing & Preference o3 leads

o3: 63.5 (#64), Qwen3.5 27B: 59.3 (#111)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmarko3Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena Text14101409
LMArena Creative Writing13591362
LMArena Multi-Turn14051410
Short-Story Creative Writing83.9%—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1676—
WildBench86.1%—

Frequently asked questions

Is o3 better than Qwen3.5 27B?

o3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.5 to 41.9 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5 27B costs 4.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, o3 or Qwen3.5 27B?

Qwen3.5 27B is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.40 per million output tokens; o3 lists at $2 and $8.

Is o3 or Qwen3.5 27B better for coding?

o3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.8 versus 38.9 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.5 27B does, with 262K tokens against 200K.

How many benchmarks do o3 and Qwen3.5 27B share?

22 benchmarks have published results for both models. o3 has 63 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 27B has 28.

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