DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B vs Qwen3.5-9B Comparison

Comparing DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B and Qwen3.5-9B across benchmarks, pricing, and capabilities.

Performance Benchmarks

Comparative analysis across standard metrics

1 benchmarks

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B outperforms in 0 benchmarks, while Qwen3.5-9B is better at 1 benchmark (GPQA).

Qwen3.5-9B significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Sat Mar 14 2026 • llm-stats.com

Arena Performance

Human preference votes

Pricing Analysis

Price comparison per million tokens

Cost data unavailable.

Lowest available price from all providers
Sat Mar 14 2026 • llm-stats.com
DeepSeek
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
Input tokens$0.00
Output tokens$0.00
Best providerUnknown Organization
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3.5-9B
Input tokens$0.00
Output tokens$0.00
Best providerUnknown Organization
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Model Size

Parameter count comparison

7.2B diff

Qwen3.5-9B has 7.2B more parameters than DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B, making it 405.6% larger.

DeepSeek
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
1.8Bparameters
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3.5-9B
9.0Bparameters
1.8B
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
9.0B
Qwen3.5-9B

Input Capabilities

Supported data types and modalities

Qwen3.5-9B supports multimodal inputs, whereas DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B does not.

Qwen3.5-9B can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Qwen3.5-9B

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B is licensed under MIT, while Qwen3.5-9B uses Apache 2.0.

License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

MIT

Open weights

Qwen3.5-9B

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B was released on 2025-01-20, while Qwen3.5-9B was released on 2026-03-02.

Qwen3.5-9B is 14 months newer than DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B.

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

Jan 20, 2025

1.1 years ago

Qwen3.5-9B

Mar 2, 2026

1 weeks ago

1.1yr newer

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.

Unable to compare the recency of their training data.

No cutoff dates available

Outputs Comparison

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Key Takeaways

Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team

Qwen3.5-9B

View details

Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team

Supports multimodal inputs
Higher GPQA score (81.7% vs 33.8%)

Detailed Comparison

AI Model Comparison Table
Feature
DeepSeek
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3.5-9B