Compare/Qwen3.5 2B (Reasoning) vs Llama 3.2 Instruct 3B

Qwen3.5 2B (Reasoning)vsLlama 3.2 Instruct 3B

Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.

Alibaba

Qwen3.5 2B (Reasoning)

Input
$0.02/M
Output
$0.1/M
Speed
357 tok/s
TTFT
0.54s
Meta

Llama 3.2 Instruct 3B

Input
$0.085/M
Output
$0.085/M
Speed
54 tok/s
TTFT
0.35s

Winner by Category

Cheaper
Qwen3.5 2B (Reasoning)
Faster (tok/s)
Qwen3.5 2B (Reasoning)
Lower Latency
Llama 3.2 Instruct 3B
Benchmarks (5-7)
Llama 3.2 Instruct 3B

Pricing Comparison

MetricQwen3.5 2B (Reasoning)Llama 3.2 Instruct 3B
Input ($/M tokens)$0.02$0.085
Output ($/M tokens)$0.1$0.085
Cost for 1M input + 100K output tokens:
Qwen3.5 2B (Reasoning)$0.03
Llama 3.2 Instruct 3B$0.09

Speed Comparison

Output Speed (tokens/s) — higher is better
Qwen3.5 2B (Reasoning)
357 tok/s
Llama 3.2 Instruct 3B
54 tok/s
Time to First Token (seconds) — lower is better
Qwen3.5 2B (Reasoning)
0.54s
Llama 3.2 Instruct 3B
0.35s

Benchmark Comparison

Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks

Intelligence Index
16.39.7
Coding Index
3.5
Math Index
3.3
GPQA Diamond
45.6%25.5%
MMLU-Pro
34.7%
LiveCodeBench
8.3%
AIME 2025
3.3%
MATH-500
48.9%
Humanity's Last Exam
2.1%5.2%
SciCode
2.8%5.2%
IFBench
31.5%26.2%
TerminalBench
3.8%
Qwen3.5 2B (Reasoning)5 wins
7 winsLlama 3.2 Instruct 3B

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is cheaper, Qwen3.5 2B (Reasoning) or Llama 3.2 Instruct 3B?

Qwen3.5 2B (Reasoning) is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.04/M tokens vs $0.09/M for Llama 3.2 Instruct 3B.

Which model performs better on benchmarks?

Llama 3.2 Instruct 3B wins 7 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 5 for Qwen3.5 2B (Reasoning). See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.

Which is faster for real-time applications?

Qwen3.5 2B (Reasoning) generates tokens faster at 357 tok/s vs 54 tok/s. However, Llama 3.2 Instruct 3B has lower time-to-first-token (0.35s vs 0.54s).

When should I use Qwen3.5 2B (Reasoning) vs Llama 3.2 Instruct 3B?

Choose based on your priorities: Qwen3.5 2B (Reasoning) for lower cost, Llama 3.2 Instruct 3B for stronger benchmark performance, and Qwen3.5 2B (Reasoning) for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.