Alibaba
Released March 2, 2026

Qwen3.5 9B

Qwen3.5 9B by Alibaba: dense open-weight small-series VLM with Gated DeltaNet layers, early fusion multimodal pretraining, MTP, and 201-language support.

Inputs
Text
Image
Video
Outputs
Text

Model Overview

Capabilities, design details, and architectural traits

Qwen3.5 9B - Gated DeltaNet Hybrid Architecture

Qwen3.5 9B is the top-of-range model in the officially designated Small subfamily (0.8B, 2B, 4B, 9B) of the Qwen3.5 family. Like the 27B, it is a dense model with a built-in vision encoder - every parameter is active during inference and image/video inputs are handled natively without a separately attached adapter.

TraitDetail
Gated DeltaNet hybrid layout32 layers arranged in 8 cycles: each cycle contains 3x (Gated DeltaNet -> FFN) followed by 1x (Gated Attention -> FFN), interleaving linear and standard attention at a fixed 3:1 ratio
Early fusion multimodal pretrainingText, image, and video tokens are interleaved and trained jointly from pretraining - not via post-hoc visual adapters
Multi-Token Prediction (MTP)Trained with multi-step MTP, documented explicitly in the model card
201 languagesMultilingual coverage across 201 languages and dialects
Context window262,144 tokens natively, extensible to 1,010,000 tokens via YaRN
LicenseApache 2.0 open-weight

Small Series Classification

The Qwen3.5 Small classification is an official series designation used in Qwen's own documentation to group the 0.8B-9B variants as a distinct subfamily from the Medium models (27B, 35B-A3B, 122B-A10B, 397B-A17B).

Benchmark Performance

Independent evaluations · Artificial Analysis

11.2%
Intelligence
28.7%
Coding Index
1.2%
Agentic Index

Accuracy & Capability Details

GPQA - Graduate Science80.6%
Humanity's Last Exam14.9%
SciCode - Scientific Coding29.5%
Instruction Following66.7%
Long Context Reasoning70.0%
τ²-Bench - Agentic Tasks86.8%
TerminalBench - System Control24.2%

Compare Models Side-by-Side

Evaluate specifications, pricing, and independent benchmark indices

Model Details
General Info
ProviderAlibabaAnthropicAnthropic
Release DateMarch 2, 2026September 22, 2026September 28, 2026
Knowledge Cutoff--Jun 2026
Context & Limits
Context Window262K
1M
Best Context Window
1M
Best Context Window
Pricing (per 1M tokens)
Input Pricing
$0.17
Best Input Pricing
$4$2
Output Pricing
$0.25
Best Output Pricing
$20$10
Modalities
Inputs
textimagevideo
textimagefile
textimagefile
Outputs
text
text
text
Benchmarks (0-100)
Intelligence Index13.3
57.6
Best Intelligence Index
56.0
Coding Index23.5--
Agentic Index---
Qwen3.5 9B
Claude Opus 5.5
Claude Sonnet 5.5

Humanity's Last Exam

Extremely difficult logical reasoning and knowledge.

9%
Qwen3.5 9B
Humanity's Last Exam
Score: 9%
Qwen3.5 9B
61%
Claude Opus 5.5
Humanity's Last Exam
Score: 61%
Claude Opus 5.5
55%
Claude Sonnet 5.5
Humanity's Last Exam
Score: 55%
Claude Sonnet 5.5

Long Context Reasoning

Logical reasoning over long context windows.

46%
Qwen3.5 9B
Long Context Reasoning
Score: 46%
Qwen3.5 9B
85%
Claude Opus 5.5
Long Context Reasoning
Score: 85%
Claude Opus 5.5
83%
Claude Sonnet 5.5
Long Context Reasoning
Score: 83%
Claude Sonnet 5.5

SciCode Benchmark

Scientific coding and mathematical modeling.

28%
Qwen3.5 9B
SciCode Benchmark
Score: 28%
Qwen3.5 9B
67%
Claude Opus 5.5
SciCode Benchmark
Score: 67%
Claude Opus 5.5
61%
Claude Sonnet 5.5
SciCode Benchmark
Score: 61%
Claude Sonnet 5.5

Independent evaluation data provided by Artificial Analysis. To view the latest benchmarks and full details, visit their official site.

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