Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.
| Metric | Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) | Nova Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Input ($/M tokens) | $0.6 | $0.8 |
| Output ($/M tokens) | $3.6 | $3.2 |
Verdict. Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) wins the overall benchmark matchup 7–5 across 12 overlapping categories, but raw benchmark score is only one input to the decision.
Pricing. Both models sit in the budget bracket for output-token pricing. At 1.1× the per-million-token cost, Nova Pro is meaningfully cheaper if your traffic is output-heavy (long completions, document generation, agent loops). Nova Pro makes more sense when output volume is low and absolute reasoning quality justifies the premium.
Strengths. Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) is strongest on GPQA Diamond (84%), IFBench (68%), Coding Index (53.7). Nova Pro leads on MATH-500 (79%), MMLU-Pro (69%), GPQA Diamond (50%).
Speed. On throughput, Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) generates tokens at 58 tok/s versus 0 tok/s — about 100% faster. On time-to-first-token, Nova Pro responds in 0ms vs 1429ms, which matters most for chat-style UIs.
Provider. Alibaba and Amazon sell to overlapping but distinct developer audiences: Alibaba tends to ship frontier reasoning models with premium positioning, while Amazon 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): Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) costs $72.00 ($864/year); Nova Pro costs $72.00 ($864/year). At a smaller 5M-input/2M-output scale (single-developer tool or prototype): Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) ≈ $10.20/run, Nova Pro ≈ $10.40/run. At agent/realtime scale (200M input / 100M output per million requests): Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) ≈ $480/run, Nova Pro ≈ $480/run.
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.
Head-to-head deltas
Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks
Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $1.35/M tokens vs $1.40/M for Nova Pro.
Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) wins 7 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 5 for Nova Pro. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.
Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) generates tokens faster at 58 tok/s vs 0 tok/s. However, Nova Pro has lower time-to-first-token (0.00s vs 1.43s).
Choose based on your priorities: Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) for lower cost, Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) for stronger benchmark performance, and Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.