The Known Good Updated 4 Sep 2026 Subscribe
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 vs Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus ·DeepSeek vs Alibaba

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 vs Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus — head-to-head comparison

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 profile Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus profile All comparisons
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 — DeepSeek
Quality
#43 of 65
62based on 4 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#302 of 338
21.8
Output tokens per second
Price
#152 of 442
$0.46
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.32 · Out $0.89
Cache hit price
#60 of 324
$0.020
per 1M tokens (−94%)
Context
#335 of 476
164k
tokens (~300 pages)
Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus — Alibaba
Quality
#19 of 65
79based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#236 of 338
35.4
Output tokens per second
Price
#194 of 442
$0.73
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.33 · Out $1.95
Cache hit price
#108 of 324
$0.050
per 1M tokens (−85%)
Context
#112 of 476
1.00M
tokens (~1,500 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 scores 62 and Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus scores 79 — a 16-point lead for Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus. They share 2 published evaluations, with DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 ahead on 0 and Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus ahead on 2.

Blended pricing is $0.46 per 1M tokens for DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 and $0.73 for Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus — DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 is about 1.6× cheaper.

Throughput is 22 tokens per second for DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 and 35 for Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus, with time to first token at 1.2s and 1.0s. DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 accepts 164k tokens of context against 1.00M.

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted); Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus is proprietary. 4 tracked hosts serve one or both.

Generated from tracked data on 4 Sep 2026 · how these comparisons are computed →

At a glance
MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus
Known Good Index 62 based on 4 of 7 evaluations 79 based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Blended $/1M $0.46 $0.73
Output tok/s 22 35
Context window 164k 1.00M
Providers 3 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.

MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus
Known Good Index 62 79
Mathematics Index 57 —
Reasoning Index 62 —
Openness Index 60 5
The Known Good

Quality Breakdown

Every evaluation both models report a published score for

Evaluations both models report

Bar = DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 · marker = Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond71 / 88
Mock AIME 2024–2549 / 93

Right-hand figures read DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 / Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus. DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 leads on 0 of 2, Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus 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.

MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus
Text Arena 1,332 1,437
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,358 1,444
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.

MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus
Input $/1M $0.32 $0.33
Output $/1M $0.89 $1.95
Blended $/1M $0.46 $0.73
Cache read $/1M $0.020 $0.050
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.

MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus
Context window 164k 1.00M
Max output tokens 16k 66k
The Known Good

Speed & Latency

Mean throughput and time to first token across hosting providers, over successful measurements from the last 48 hours

Throughput and latency

Means across all tracked providers over successful measurements from the last 48 hours, derived from OpenRouter endpoint telemetry.

MetricDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus
Output tokens/s 22 35
Time to first token 1.2s 1.0s
The Known Good

Providers

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

4 hosts
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider DeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 blendedDeepSeek: DeepSeek V3 tok/s Qwen: Qwen3.6 Plus blendedQwen: Qwen3.6 Plus tok/s
StreamLake $0.45 24 — —
Novita $0.62 17 — —
DeepInfra $0.46 11 — —
Alibaba · first party — — $0.73 33

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 →