GPT-5 Mini versus Qwen3.6 Flash

What are we comparing?

This comparison pits two budget models, built for high volumes at a low price against each other: GPT-5 Mini and Qwen3.6 Flash, one from OpenAI, the other from Alibaba Cloud (Qwen). The first dates from August 7, 2025, the second from April 27, 2026.

All figures below come from public sources checked on October 22, 2026: models.dev and OpenRouter for prices and capabilities, Epoch AI for scores.

What the benchmarks say

On our capability index, GPT-5 Mini scores 62.9 out of 100 and Qwen3.6 Flash 64.5. Qwen3.6 Flash leads by 1.6 points.

On the 3 benchmarks reported for both, GPT-5 Mini wins 2 times and Qwen3.6 Flash 1:

• GPQA Diamond (PhD-level science questions): GPT-5 Mini 75%, Qwen3.6 Flash 83.3%
• OTIS Mock AIME (competition mathematics problems): GPT-5 Mini 86.7%, Qwen3.6 Flash 84.4%
• FrontierMath (very hard research-level mathematics): GPT-5 Mini 46.7%, Qwen3.6 Flash 22.5%

Pricing

GPT-5 Mini costs $0.25 per million input tokens and $2 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Flash costs $0.19 and $1.13.

For a typical agent task (read 20,000 tokens, write 2,000), expect $0.009 with GPT-5 Mini versus $0.006 with Qwen3.6 Flash. Qwen3.6 Flash is 1.5 times cheaper, a gap that adds up quickly over 1,000 tasks: $2.94 difference.

Run the numbers with your own volumes in the agent cost calculator.

Features and limits

Qwen3.6 Flash reads more in one go: 1,000,000 tokens of context (roughly 1,500 pages), versus 272,000 for GPT-5 Mini.

Reasoning mode: GPT-5 Mini yes, Qwen3.6 Flash yes. Tool calling: GPT-5 Mini yes, Qwen3.6 Flash yes. Image input: GPT-5 Mini yes, Qwen3.6 Flash yes.

Neither publishes its weights: both are used through an API.

In short

Our reading of the data:

• Choose Qwen3.6 Flash for a higher capability index, a lower cost, a larger context window and a more recent release.

This verdict relies on public figures; it does not replace a trial on your own tasks.