BenchLeader

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).
MetricQwen3 6 (max)Qwen3 8 (max)
BenchLeader Index63.363.6
Agents & tools score72.056.0
Coding score58.269.7
Composite score64.970.9
Human preference score65.968.3
Instruction following score74.2
Knowledge score64.062.3
Long context score66.965.7
Maths score64.262.4
Reasoning score63.268.1
Multimodal score67.2
Blended price $/M$2.96$2.67
Output speed59 tok/s38 tok/s
Time to first answer38.5 s55.3 s
Context window246k1M
GPQA Diamond87.4%
OTIS Mock AIME91.1%
SWE-bench Verified (Epoch)76.7%
SimpleQA Verified52.0%
SimpleBench63.0%
SciCode52.9%
ProofBench58.0%
Epoch Capabilities Index149.3156.6
LMArena Text14601480
LMArena Hard Prompts14821502
LMArena Coding15091520
LMArena WebDev14791670
LMArena Vision1313
LMArena Agent3.9
LiveBench78.5%
LiveBench Reasoning88.2%
LiveBench Coding72.9%
LiveBench Agentic Coding64.7%
LiveBench Mathematics91.3%
LiveBench Data Analysis78.4%
LiveBench Language79.7%
AA Intelligence Index28.440.3
IFBench76.6%
AA-LCR80.7%78.3%
MMMU-Pro82.3%
AA-Omniscience9.23.4
Terminal-Bench Hard43.9%
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%
LiveCodeBench87.8%
MMLU-Pro88.6%
IOI73.0%
LegalBench83.6%
CorpFin66.5%65.8%
TaxEval75.5%
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals)67.4%
SWE-bench (Vals)72.8%85.6%
GPQA Diamond (Vals)93.7%
Vals Index51.8

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.