MAI-Thinking-1 vs Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
MAI-Thinking-1 and Qwen3.6-35B-A3B are closely matched at 32.9 and 32.5 on the LLM Stats Score.
Microsoft · Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Updated for 2026
Which is better?
MAI-Thinking-1 and Qwen3.6-35B-A3B are closely matched on the overall LLM Stats Score at 32.9 and 32.5.
In the 8 individual benchmarks reported for both models, MAI-Thinking-1 wins 5; this is a narrower head-to-head signal than the composite indexes.
Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.
Choose MAI-Thinking-1
- you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 5 of 8 exact shared results
- you want the most recent training data — it shipped Jun 2026
Choose Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
- you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune
At a glance
The differences that matter most.
Capability indexes
Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks
Individual benchmarks
23 reported for MAI-Thinking-1 · 49 for Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
MAI-Thinking-1 outperforms in 5 benchmarks (AIME 2026, HMMT Feb 26, LiveCodeBench v6, SWE-Bench Pro, SWE-Bench Verified), while Qwen3.6-35B-A3B is better at 3 benchmarks (GPQA, MMLU-Pro, Terminal-Bench 2.0).
MAI-Thinking-1 shows notably better performance in the majority of benchmarks.
Human preference
Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores
Model Size
Parameter count comparison
MAI-Thinking-1 has 965.0B more parameters than Qwen3.6-35B-A3B, making it 2757.1% larger.
Input capabilities
Documented input modalities across available providers
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B supports multimodal inputs, whereas MAI-Thinking-1 does not.
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.
MAI-Thinking-1
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
License
Usage and distribution terms
MAI-Thinking-1 is licensed under a proprietary license, while Qwen3.6-35B-A3B uses Apache 2.0.
License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.
Proprietary
Closed source
Apache 2.0
Open weights
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
MAI-Thinking-1 was released on 2026-06-02, while Qwen3.6-35B-A3B was released on 2026-04-16.
MAI-Thinking-1 is 2 months newer than Qwen3.6-35B-A3B.
Jun 2, 2026
3 months ago
1mo newerApr 16, 2026
4 months ago
Knowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.
Unable to compare the recency of their training data.
Outputs Comparison
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against MAI-Thinking-1 and Qwen3.6-35B-A3B side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about MAI-Thinking-1 vs Qwen3.6-35B-A3B.