Qwen3 6 vs Qwen3 8
Verdict
- Qwen3 6 (max) and Qwen3 8 (max) are level on quality (63.3 vs 63.6).
- Qwen3 6 (max) is stronger in agents & tools, instruction following, knowledge, long context, maths.
- Qwen3 8 (max) is stronger in coding, composite, human preference, reasoning, multimodal.
- They cost about the same ($2.67 per 1M blended).
- Qwen3 6 (max) streams 1.6× faster (59 vs 38 tokens per second).
| Metric | Qwen3 6 (max) | Qwen3 8 (max) |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 63.3 | 63.6 |
| Agents & tools score | 72.0 | 56.0 |
| Coding score | 58.2 | 69.7 |
| Composite score | 64.9 | 70.9 |
| Human preference score | 65.9 | 68.3 |
| Instruction following score | 74.2 | – |
| Knowledge score | 64.0 | 62.3 |
| Long context score | 66.9 | 65.7 |
| Maths score | 64.2 | 62.4 |
| Reasoning score | 63.2 | 68.1 |
| Multimodal score | – | 67.2 |
| Blended price $/M | $2.96 | $2.67 |
| Output speed | 59 tok/s | 38 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 38.5 s | 55.3 s |
| Context window | 246k | 1M |
| GPQA Diamond | 87.4% | – |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 91.1% | – |
| SWE-bench Verified (Epoch) | 76.7% | – |
| SimpleQA Verified | 52.0% | – |
| SimpleBench | 63.0% | – |
| SciCode | – | 52.9% |
| ProofBench | – | 58.0% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 149.3 | 156.6 |
| LMArena Text | 1460 | 1480 |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1482 | 1502 |
| LMArena Coding | 1509 | 1520 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1479 | 1670 |
| LMArena Vision | – | 1313 |
| LMArena Agent | – | 3.9 |
| LiveBench | – | 78.5% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | – | 88.2% |
| LiveBench Coding | – | 72.9% |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | – | 64.7% |
| LiveBench Mathematics | – | 91.3% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | – | 78.4% |
| LiveBench Language | – | 79.7% |
| AA Intelligence Index | 28.4 | 40.3 |
| IFBench | 76.6% | – |
| AA-LCR | 80.7% | 78.3% |
| MMMU-Pro | – | 82.3% |
| AA-Omniscience | 9.2 | 3.4 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | 43.9% | – |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | 88.8% | 92.7% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 30.8% | 43.0% |
| SciCode (AA) | – | 53.2% |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | 95.9% | – |
| LiveCodeBench | – | 87.8% |
| MMLU-Pro | – | 88.6% |
| IOI | – | 73.0% |
| LegalBench | – | 83.6% |
| CorpFin | 66.5% | 65.8% |
| TaxEval | – | 75.5% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | – | 67.4% |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 72.8% | 85.6% |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | – | 93.7% |
| Vals Index | – | 51.8 |
Data as of 2026-09-10. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
Qwen3 6 vs Qwen3 8: questions
- Is Qwen3 6 better than Qwen3 8?
- Qwen3 6 (max) and Qwen3 8 (max) are level on quality (63.3 vs 63.6). The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Qwen3 8 (max) is ahead overall as of 2026-09-10, but check the category scores for your use.
- Is Qwen3 6 better than Qwen3 8 for coding?
- Qwen3 8 scores higher in coding (70 vs 58 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Is Qwen3 6 better than Qwen3 8 for agentic tasks?
- Qwen3 6 scores higher in agentic tasks (72 vs 56 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is cheaper, Qwen3 6 or Qwen3 8?
- Qwen3 8 is cheaper: $2.67 against $2.96 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
- Which is faster, Qwen3 6 or Qwen3 8?
- Qwen3 6 streams faster: 59 against 38 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Qwen3 8 accepts more context: 1M against 246k tokens.