Compare / Qwen3.5 9B vs MiniCPM-SALA
Qwen3.5 9B vs MiniCPM-SALA
Updated November 2026
Verdict
Qwen3.5 9B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 63.9 vs 52.6. On the 2 benchmarks both labs report, Qwen3.5 9B wins 2 and MiniCPM-SALA wins 0. Both need about 6.7 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization. Only Qwen3.5 9B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.028 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted.
Pick Qwen3.5 9B if…
- you want the strongest model overall
- you mostly write code
- you want a hosted API rather than running it yourself
- you need image input
- you want the more widely used model (more quantized builds and community support)
Pick MiniCPM-SALA if…
- you work with long documents
Specifications
| Qwen3.5 9B | MiniCPM-SALA | |
|---|---|---|
| Small LM Index | 63.9 (likely 58–69) | 52.6 (likely 48–57) |
| Lab | Alibaba (Qwen) · China | OpenBMB (MiniCPM) · China |
| Released | 2026-03-02 | 2026-02-11 |
| Parameters | 9B (dense) | 9.5B (dense) |
| Memory at 4-bit | ~6.4 GB | ~6.7 GB |
| Context window | 262K tokens | 1M tokens |
| Input | text, image, video | text |
| Reasoning | Hybrid (thinking on/off) | Hybrid (thinking on/off) |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| API price / 1M tokens | $0.028 ($0.025 in, $0.036 out) | Self-host only |
| Hugging Face downloads (30 days) | 6.4M | 3.7K |
Benchmarks
Higher is better. Bold marks the winner where both labs report a score. ≈ marks the index model's estimate for a score that wasn't reported, ✓ an independent measurement and * a score measured by another lab.
| Benchmark | Qwen3.5 9B | MiniCPM-SALA |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro Knowledge | 82.5 | 67.0 |
| GPQA Diamond Knowledge | 81.7 | ≈ 66 |
| AIME Math | ≈ 88 | 78.3 |
| LiveCodeBench Coding | 65.6 | 52.0 |
| τ²-Bench Agentic | 79.1 | — |
| IFBench Instruction following | 64.5 | — |
| MMMU-Pro Vision | 69.2✓ | — |
| IFEval Instruction following | — | 76.3 |
Scores are mostly reported by each lab with its own settings, so small gaps are noise. See the methodology. Open in the interactive comparison to add more models.
Questions
Which is better, Qwen3.5 9B or MiniCPM-SALA?
Qwen3.5 9B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 63.9 vs 52.6. On the 2 benchmarks both labs report, Qwen3.5 9B wins 2 and MiniCPM-SALA wins 0.
Which is cheaper to run?
Only Qwen3.5 9B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.028 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted. Both need about 6.7 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization.
Which has the longer context window?
MiniCPM-SALA has the longer context window: 1M tokens against 262K.
Can I use Qwen3.5 9B and MiniCPM-SALA commercially?
Both are released under the Apache-2.0 license. Apache 2.0 and MIT allow commercial use; other licenses can add conditions, so read the license before shipping a product.