Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.
| Metric | Gemma 3 1B Instruct | Qwen3.5 Omni Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Input ($/M tokens) | $0 | $0.4 |
| Output ($/M tokens) | $0 | $4.8 |
Verdict. Qwen3.5 Omni Plus takes the aggregate benchmark matchup 1–0 across 1 categories. Real workloads usually care about a handful of specific tasks — see the per-benchmark table above.
Pricing. Pricing varies significantly between these models — check the table above for the exact per-token rates. Many production workloads actually surface input-token cost (retrieval-augmented prompts, code-context windows), so factor both directions.
Strengths. Gemma 3 1B Instruct is strongest on Intelligence Index (1.0). Qwen3.5 Omni Plus leads on Intelligence Index (31.3).
Speed. Speed data is incomplete for this pair; benchmark and price should decide.
Provider. Google and Alibaba sell to overlapping but distinct developer audiences: Google tends to ship frontier reasoning models with premium positioning, while Alibaba often prices more aggressively. Your existing vendor relationships, billing, and SLA preferences may matter as much as the raw numbers above.
Workload cost. Workload scenarios (per million requests at 30M input + 15M output tokens): Gemma 3 1B Instruct costs $0.00 ($0/year); Qwen3.5 Omni Plus costs $84.00 ($1008/year). At a smaller 5M-input/2M-output scale (single-developer tool or prototype): Gemma 3 1B Instruct ≈ $0.00/run, Qwen3.5 Omni Plus ≈ $11.60/run. At agent/realtime scale (200M input / 100M output per million requests): Gemma 3 1B Instruct ≈ $0/run, Qwen3.5 Omni Plus ≈ $560/run. Gemma 3 1B Instruct becomes more attractive at higher volume — the absolute per-token pricing difference compounds when you ship at scale.
Recommendation. Both models have legitimate use cases — the right answer depends on whether you are optimizing for benchmark ceiling, latency, or unit cost. Start with the cheaper / faster model, evaluate against your specific task, and only switch if the upgrade shows a meaningful lift.
Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks
Gemma 3 1B Instruct is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.00/M tokens vs $1.50/M for Qwen3.5 Omni Plus.
Qwen3.5 Omni Plus wins 1 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 0 for Gemma 3 1B Instruct. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.
Qwen3.5 Omni Plus generates tokens faster at 49 tok/s vs — tok/s. However, Qwen3.5 Omni Plus has lower time-to-first-token (2.51s vs —s).
Choose based on your priorities: Gemma 3 1B Instruct for lower cost, Qwen3.5 Omni Plus for stronger benchmark performance, and Qwen3.5 Omni Plus for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.