Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) logo
Alibaba
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Open weights model

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Released April 2026

Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) Intelligence, Performance & Price Analysis

API Provider Benchmarks

Model summary

Intelligence

43
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
4 out of 4 units for Intelligence.

Speed

193.4
Output tokens per second
4 out of 4 units for Speed.

Input Price

$0.248

USD per 1M tokens

4 out of 4 units for Input Price.

Output Price

$1.485
USD per 1M tokens
4 out of 4 units for Output Price.

Verbosity

140M
Output tokens from Intelligence Index
4 out of 4 units for Verbosity.

Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) is amongst the leading models in intelligence, but particularly expensive when comparing to other open weight models of similar size. It's also notably fast, however very verbose. The model supports text and image input, outputs text, and has a 262k tokens context window.

Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) scores 43 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, placing it well above average among comparable models (averaging 15). When evaluating the Intelligence Index, it generated 140M tokens, which is very verbose in comparison to the average of 23M.

Pricing for Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) is $0.25 per 1M input tokens (expensive, average: $0.05) and $1.49 per 1M output tokens (expensive, average: $0.15). In total, it cost $279.68 to evaluate Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) on the Intelligence Index.

At 193 tokens per second, Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) is notably fast (100).

ReasoningYes

This page shows the reasoning version of this model.

A non-reasoning variant may also exist.

Input modality

Supports: text, image

Output modality

Supports: text

Context window262k
~393 A4 pages of size 12 Arial font
Total parameters36B
Active parameters3B
Number of parameters active per token during inference
LicenseApache 2.0
Model weightsHugging Face

Metrics are compared against models of the same class:

  • Non-reasoning models → compared only with other non-reasoning models
  • Reasoning models → compared across both reasoning and non-reasoning
  • Open weights models → compared only with other open weights models of the same size class:
    • Tiny: ≤4B parameters
    • Small: 4B–40B parameters
    • Medium: 40B–150B parameters
    • Large: >150B parameters
  • Proprietary models → compared across proprietary and open weights models of the same price range, using a blended 3:1 input/output price ratio:
    • <$0.15 per 1M tokens
    • $0.15–$1 per 1M tokens
    • >$1 per 1M tokens

Highlights

Intelligence
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index · Higher is better
Speed
Output tokens per second · Higher is better
Price
USD per 1M tokens (3:1 input-output ratio) · Lower is better

Intelligence

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.0 incorporates 10 evaluations: GDPval-AA, 𝜏²-Bench Telecom, Terminal-Bench Hard, SciCode, AA-LCR, AA-Omniscience, IFBench, Humanity's Last Exam, GPQA Diamond, CritPt
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.0 includes: GDPval-AA, 𝜏²-Bench Telecom, Terminal-Bench Hard, SciCode, AA-LCR, AA-Omniscience, IFBench, Humanity's Last Exam, GPQA Diamond, CritPt. See Intelligence Index methodology for further details, including a breakdown of each evaluation and how we run them.

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index by Open Weights / Proprietary

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.0 incorporates 10 evaluations: GDPval-AA, 𝜏²-Bench Telecom, Terminal-Bench Hard, SciCode, AA-LCR, AA-Omniscience, IFBench, Humanity's Last Exam, GPQA Diamond, CritPt
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.0 includes: GDPval-AA, 𝜏²-Bench Telecom, Terminal-Bench Hard, SciCode, AA-LCR, AA-Omniscience, IFBench, Humanity's Last Exam, GPQA Diamond, CritPt. See Intelligence Index methodology for further details, including a breakdown of each evaluation and how we run them.

Indicates whether the model weights are available. Models are labelled as 'Commercial Use Restricted' if the weights are available but commercial use is limited (typically requires obtaining a paid license).

Intelligence Evaluations

Intelligence evaluations measured independently by Artificial Analysis · Higher is better
Results claimed by AI Lab (not yet independently verified)
GDPval-AA

Agentic real-world work tasks, (ELO-500)/2000

Terminal-Bench Hard

Agentic coding & terminal use

𝜏²-Bench Telecom

Agentic tool use

AA-LCR

Long context reasoning

AA-Omniscience Accuracy

Knowledge

AA-Omniscience Non-Hallucination Rate

1 - hallucination rate

Humanity's Last Exam

Reasoning & knowledge

GPQA Diamond

Scientific reasoning

SciCode

Coding

IFBench

Instruction following

CritPt

Physics reasoning

APEX-Agents-AA

Long-horizon agentic tasks

MMMU-Pro

Visual reasoning

Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon.

While model intelligence generally translates across use cases, specific evaluations may be more relevant for certain use cases.

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.0 includes: GDPval-AA, 𝜏²-Bench Telecom, Terminal-Bench Hard, SciCode, AA-LCR, AA-Omniscience, IFBench, Humanity's Last Exam, GPQA Diamond, CritPt. See Intelligence Index methodology for further details, including a breakdown of each evaluation and how we run them.

Openness

Artificial Analysis Openness Index: Results

Openness Index assesses model openness on a 0 to 100 normalized scale (higher is more open)
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Intelligence Index Comparisons

Intelligence vs. Price

Blended at 7:2:1 (Cache Hit : Input : Output) · Price: USD per 1M tokens
Most attractive quadrant
Alibaba
Anthropic
DeepSeek
Google
Kimi
NVIDIA
OpenAI
xAI
Xiaomi
Z AI
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon.

While higher intelligence models are typically more expensive, they do not all follow the same price-quality curve.

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.0 includes: GDPval-AA, 𝜏²-Bench Telecom, Terminal-Bench Hard, SciCode, AA-LCR, AA-Omniscience, IFBench, Humanity's Last Exam, GPQA Diamond, CritPt. See Intelligence Index methodology for further details, including a breakdown of each evaluation and how we run them.

Price per token, represented as USD per million Tokens. Price is a blend of cache hit, input, and output token prices using the selected ratio.

The blended bar shown here uses cache hit price only. Other caching costs differ by provider:

  • Anthropic: charges a separate cache write fee, with different rates for 5-minute and 1-hour TTLs (1-hour TTL is more expensive). Blended price charts use Anthropic cache write price for the input leg.
  • Google (Vertex/Gemini): charges a per-hour cache storage fee in addition to cache hit pricing. Some providers also use tiered pricing for prompts above 200K tokens.
  • OpenAI, DeepSeek, others: typically charge only cache hit pricing with no write or storage fee.

See Prompt Caching for the full breakdown.

Figures represent performance of the model's first-party API (e.g. OpenAI for o1) or the median across providers where a first-party API is not available (e.g. Meta's Llama models).

Intelligence Index Token Use & Cost

Output Tokens Used to Run Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index

Tokens used to run all evaluations in the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

The number of tokens required to run all evaluations in the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (excluding repeats).

Cost to Run Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index

Cost (USD) to run all evaluations in the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

The cost to run the evaluations in the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, calculated using the model's input and output token pricing and the number of tokens used across evaluations (excluding repeats).

Context Window

Context Window

Context window: tokens limit · Higher is better
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Larger context windows are relevant to RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) LLM workflows which typically involve reasoning and information retrieval of large amounts of data.

Maximum number of combined input & output tokens. Output tokens commonly have a significantly lower limit (varied by model).

Pricing

Pricing now includes a “Cache Hit Price” alongside Input and Output pricing, with new blend ratios.

Pricing: Cache Hit, Input, and Output

Price: USD per 1M tokens
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Price per token for cached prompts (previously processed), typically offering a significant discount compared to regular input price, represented as USD per million tokens. The values shown here are the cache hit price; cache write and cache storage are billed separately and vary by provider — see "Cache pricing by provider" for detail.

Price per token included in the request/message sent to the API, represented as USD per million Tokens.

The blended bar shown here uses cache hit price only. Other caching costs differ by provider:

  • Anthropic: charges a separate cache write fee, with different rates for 5-minute and 1-hour TTLs (1-hour TTL is more expensive). Blended price charts use Anthropic cache write price for the input leg.
  • Google (Vertex/Gemini): charges a per-hour cache storage fee in addition to cache hit pricing. Some providers also use tiered pricing for prompts above 200K tokens.
  • OpenAI, DeepSeek, others: typically charge only cache hit pricing with no write or storage fee.

See Prompt Caching for the full breakdown.

Price per token generated by the model (received from the API), represented as USD per million Tokens.

Figures represent performance of the model's first-party API (e.g. OpenAI for o1) or the median across providers where a first-party API is not available (e.g. Meta's Llama models).

Speed

Measured by Output Speed (tokens per second)

Output Speed

Output tokens per second · Higher is better
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Tokens per second received while the model is generating tokens (ie. after first chunk has been received from the API for models which support streaming).

Figures represent performance of the model's first-party API (e.g. OpenAI for o1) or the median across providers where a first-party API is not available (e.g. Meta's Llama models).

Output Speed vs. Price

Output speed: output tokens per second · Price: USD per 1M tokens
Most attractive quadrant
Alibaba
Anthropic
DeepSeek
Google
Kimi
NVIDIA
OpenAI
xAI
Xiaomi
Z AI
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon.

Tokens per second received while the model is generating tokens (ie. after first chunk has been received from the API for models which support streaming).

Price per token, represented as USD per million Tokens. Price is a blend of cache hit, input, and output token prices using the selected ratio.

Latency

Measured by Time (seconds) to First Token

Latency: Time To First Answer Token

Seconds to first answer token received · Accounts for reasoning model 'thinking' time
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Time to first answer token received, in seconds, after API request sent. For reasoning models, this includes the 'thinking' time of the model before providing an answer. For models which do not support streaming, this represents time to receive the completion.

End-to-End Response Time

Seconds to output 500 tokens, calculated based on time to first token, 'thinking' time for reasoning models, and output speed

End-to-End Response Time

Seconds to output 500 tokens, including reasoning model 'thinking' time · Lower is better
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon

Seconds to receive a 500 token response. Key components:

  • Input time: Time to receive the first response token
  • Thinking time (only for reasoning models): Time reasoning models spend outputting tokens to reason prior to providing an answer. Amount of tokens based on the average reasoning tokens across a diverse set of 60 prompts (methodology details).
  • Answer time: Time to generate 500 output tokens, based on output speed

Figures represent performance of the model's first-party API (e.g. OpenAI for o1) or the median across providers where a first-party API is not available (e.g. Meta's Llama models).

Model Size (Open Weights Models Only)

Model Size: Total and Active Parameters

Comparison between total model parameters and parameters active during inference
Active Parameters
Passive Parameters
Reasoning models are indicated by a lightbulb icon.

The total number of trainable weights and biases in the model, expressed in billions. These parameters are learned during training and determine the model's ability to process and generate responses.

The number of parameters actually executed during each inference forward pass, expressed in billions. For Mixture of Experts (MoE) models, a routing mechanism selects a subset of experts per token, resulting in fewer active than total parameters. Dense models use all parameters, so active equals total.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning)

Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) was released on April 16, 2026.

Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) was created by Alibaba.

Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) scores 43 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, placing it well above average among other open weight models of similar size (median: 15).

Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) generates output at 193.4 tokens per second (based on Alibaba's API), which is well above average compared to other open weight models of similar size (median: 99.9 t/s).

Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) has a time to first token (TTFT) of 2.62s (based on Alibaba's API), which is at the higher end compared to other open weight models of similar size (median: 1.95s).

Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) costs $0.25 per 1M input tokens (somewhat higher than average, median: $0.15) and $1.49 per 1M output tokens (at the higher end, median: $0.40), based on Alibaba's API.

Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) costs $0.25 per 1M input tokens and $1.49 per 1M output tokens (based on Alibaba's API). For a blended rate (3:1 input to output ratio), this is $0.56 per 1M tokens. Pricing may vary by provider. Compare provider pricing

When evaluated on the Intelligence Index, Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) generated 140M output tokens, which is at the higher end compared to other open weight models of similar size (median: 23M).

Yes, Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) is a reasoning model. It uses extended thinking or chain-of-thought reasoning to work through complex problems before providing an answer.

Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) supports text and image input.

Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) supports text output.

Yes, Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) supports image input and can analyze, describe, and answer questions about images.

Yes, Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) is multimodal. It can process text and image input and generate text output.

Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) has a context window of 260k tokens. This determines how much text and conversation history the model can process in a single request.

Yes, Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) is open weights. The model weights are publicly available and can be downloaded for self-hosting.

Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) has 36 billion parameters (3 billion active).

Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) is a Mixture of Experts (MoE) model with 36 billion total parameters, but only 3 billion active parameters are used during inference.

Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) is released under the Apache 2.0 license. This license allows commercial use. View license

Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) achieves a score of 43 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. This composite benchmark evaluates models across reasoning, knowledge, mathematics, and coding.

Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) is an open weights model that can be self-hosted. View providers

Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) is an open weights model that can be downloaded and self-hosted. Compare providers