The Known Good Updated 29 Jul 2026
Google: Gemini 3 Flash Preview vs Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview ·Google vs Alibaba

Google: Gemini 3 Flash Preview vs Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview — head-to-head comparison

Google: Gemini 3 Flash Preview profile Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview profile All comparisons
Google: Gemini 3 Flash Preview — Google
Quality
#14 of 62
83based on 4 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#58 of 317
89.0
Output tokens per second
Price
#216 of 370
$1.12
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.50 · Out $3.00
Cache hit price
#79 of 238
$0.050
per 1M tokens (−90%)
Context
#29 of 375
1.05M
tokens (~1,600 pages)
Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview — Alibaba
Quality
#9 of 62
90based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#161 of 317
47.9
Output tokens per second
Price
#265 of 370
$2.34
Blended per 1M tokens
In $1.04 · Out $6.24
Cache hit price
#136 of 238
$0.13
per 1M tokens (−88%)
Context
#158 of 375
262k
tokens (~400 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, Google: Gemini 3 Flash Preview scores 83 and Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview scores 90 — a 7-point lead for Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview. They share 3 published evaluations, with Google: Gemini 3 Flash Preview ahead on 1 and Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview ahead on 2.

Blended pricing is $1.12 per 1M tokens for Google: Gemini 3 Flash Preview and $2.34 for Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview — Google: Gemini 3 Flash Preview is about 2.1× cheaper.

Throughput is 89 tokens per second for Google: Gemini 3 Flash Preview and 48 for Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview, with time to first token at 1.7s and 1.6s. Google: Gemini 3 Flash Preview accepts 1.05M tokens of context against 262k.

Google: Gemini 3 Flash Preview is proprietary; Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview is proprietary. 3 tracked hosts serve one or both.

Generated from tracked data on 29 Jul 2026 · how these comparisons are computed →

At a glance
MetricGoogle: Gemini 3 Flash PreviewQwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Known Good Index 83 based on 4 of 7 evaluations 90 based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Blended $/1M $1.12 $2.34
Output tok/s 89 48
Context window 1.05M 262k
Providers 2 1
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Quality

Known Good Index and the capability indices, side by side

Index scores

Each index is min-max normalised across tracked models and scaled 0–100 from published evaluations. We do not run these evaluations.

MetricGoogle: Gemini 3 Flash PreviewQwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Known Good Index 83 90
Coding Index 77
Mathematics Index 93 91
Agentic Index 77 87
Openness Index 5 5
The Known Good

Quality Breakdown

Every evaluation both models report a published score for

Evaluations both models report

Bar = Google: Gemini 3 Flash Preview · marker = Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond83 / 89
Mock AIME 2024–2593 / 91
SWE-bench Verified75 / 77

Right-hand figures read Google: Gemini 3 Flash Preview / Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview. Google: Gemini 3 Flash Preview leads on 1 of 3, Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview on 2.

The Known Good

Arena Elo

Human preference rating from blind pairwise votes

Arena ratings

Elo from blind pairwise votes, ingested from Arena. Higher is better.

MetricGoogle: Gemini 3 Flash PreviewQwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Text Arena 1,456
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,460
The Known Good

Price & Cost

Published API pricing by token type

Published pricing

USD per 1M tokens. Blended is a 3:1 input:output mix. Live from OpenRouter, cross-checked against models.dev. Lower is better.

MetricGoogle: Gemini 3 Flash PreviewQwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Input $/1M $0.50 $1.04
Output $/1M $3.00 $6.24
Blended $/1M $1.12 $2.34
Cache read $/1M $0.050 $0.130
The Known Good
We publish blended price rather than cost-per-task. Cost-per-task requires token counts from an evaluation suite we do not run. Blended price is computed from published rates and is fully reproducible — see the pricing methodology.

Context Window

Maximum input accepted and maximum output emitted

Context and output limits

Provider-declared limits, from metadata via models.dev and OpenRouter. Higher is better.

MetricGoogle: Gemini 3 Flash PreviewQwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Context window 1.05M 262k
Max output tokens 66k 66k
The Known Good

Speed & Latency

Median throughput and time to first token across hosting providers

Output speedTime to first token
Throughput and latency

Medians across all tracked providers, derived from OpenRouter endpoint telemetry.

MetricGoogle: Gemini 3 Flash PreviewQwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Output tokens/s 89 48
Time to first token 1.7s 1.6s
The Known Good

Providers

Which hosts serve each model, and at what price and speed

3 hosts
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider Google: Gemini 3 Flash Preview blendedGoogle: Gemini 3 Flash Preview tok/s Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview blendedQwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview tok/s
Google AI Studio $0.56 113
Google · first party $0.56 72
Alibaba · first party $2.34 38

Per-host pricing and telemetry from OpenRouter. A dash means that host does not serve that model.

The Known Good
Sources for this page
Pricing & providers — OpenRouter Metadata — models.dev Benchmarks — Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)Elo — Arena Full attribution →