# Arete-27B vs Qwen3.5-9B (slim)

> Qwen3.5-9B scores 60.5 (C) to Arete-27B's 55.1 (C) for open-weight models you run yourself. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/arete-27b-vs-qwen3-5-9b.md (~8,500 tokens) · this version ~630 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/arete-27b-vs-qwen3-5-9b.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/arete-27b-vs-qwen3-5-9b
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-10
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Qwen3.5-9B scores 60.5 (C) on agent readiness against Arete-27B's 55.1 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Arete-27B leads on documentation and upkeep. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

- Arete-27B: C 55.1, rank #123 of 160 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/arete-27b.min.md
- Qwen3.5-9B: C 60.5, rank #87 of 160 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/qwen3-5-9b.min.md
- Arete-27B, good for Agents that want Qwen3.8-27B's coding and tool use without its handling of politically sensitive topics, on a 24 GB card or a 128 GB machine Ahead on Documentation and upkeep, 63 against 34.
- Qwen3.5-9B, good for Agents that want a small multimodal tool-calling model on a laptop or a 16 GB GPU, under a plain licence Ahead on Reach, 85 against 50; Agent interface, 70 against 60.

| Category | Arete-27B | Qwen3.5-9B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Capability (35%) | pending | pending |
| Reach (25%) | 50 | 85 |
| Risk (20%) | 55 | 55 |
| Agent interface (10%) | 60 | 70 |
| Documentation and upkeep (10%) | 63 | 34 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Arete-27B | Qwen3.5-9B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Nous Research | Alibaba (Qwen team) |
| Last release | 2026-11-06 | 2026-03-02 |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Reach, Qwen3.5-9B +35: Arete-27B 50 (Memory 10, the only build from Nous Research is the 54.7 GB BF16 release, which needs about 66 GB and fits the reference machine.); Qwen3.5-9B 85 (Memory 30, Qwen publishes no quantised 9B, so the smallest 4-bit build from a runtime's own library is Ollama's qwen3.5:9b at 6.6 GB, about 7.9 GB with the fift…)
- Documentation and upkeep, Arete-27B +29: Arete-27B 63 (Model card 8, no limitations, context length, languages or cut-off.); Qwen3.5-9B 34 (Model card 14, it covers intended use, architecture, parameters, context and 201 languages but gives no limitations and no knowledge cut-off.)
- Agent interface, Qwen3.5-9B +10: Arete-27B 60 (Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository.); Qwen3.5-9B 70 (Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository.)