Head to head
Grok Code Fast 1 vs Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B
Grok Code Fast 1 from xAI against Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B from Alibaba Qwen — specification, price and every benchmark both makers have published, in one table.
Benchmarks
Grok Code Fast 1 leads
Grok Code Fast 1 wins 1 of the 1 benchmarks both models report, Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B wins 0, though the gaps are small. The average gap across shared tests is 1.2 points.
Price
Same price
Both cost $0.525 per million tokens on a 3:1 input-to-output mix.
What actually differs
- Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B has open weights under Apache 2.0, so it can run on your own hardware with no per-token cost and no dependency on an API staying available. The other is API-only.
- Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B takes 262K tokens of context against 256K — 1.0× more room for long documents or a large codebase.
- Grok Code Fast 1 is a reasoning model and the other is not, which usually means better maths and multi-step logic in exchange for higher latency and more billed output tokens.
Scorecard
Which is better at what
Maths, coding, reasoning and the rest — one line each, averaged over the benchmarks both models actually report.
| Category | Grok Code Fast 1 | Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B | Better at this |
|---|---|---|---|
| ReasoningNeither model reports this | — | — | Not comparable |
| MathsNeither model reports this | — | — | Not comparable |
| CodingSWE-bench Verified | 70.8% | 69.6% | Grok Code Fast 1+1.2 |
| KnowledgeNeither model reports this | — | — | Not comparable |
| MultimodalNeither model reports this | — | — | Not comparable |
| Instruction followingNeither model reports this | — | — | Not comparable |
| Human preferenceNeither model reports this | — | — | Not comparable |
| Categories wonOut of 1 comparable | 1 | 0 | Grok Code Fast 1 |
Each category averages only the benchmarks every model here reports, so no one is credited for a test the other did not run. A category with no shared test is marked Not comparable rather than guessed at.
Side by side
Grok Code Fast 1 and Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B, row by row
| Attribute | Grok Code Fast 1xAI | Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35BAlibaba Qwen |
|---|---|---|
| Specification | ||
| MakerWho built it | xAI | Alibaba Qwen |
| Released | 2025-08 | 2025-07 |
| ParametersTotal, and active per token for a mixture of experts | Not reported | 480B total / 35B active |
| Architecture | Not reported | MoE |
| Context windowHow much can go in at once | 256,000 tokens | 262,144 tokens |
| Max output | 10,000 tokens | 65,536 tokens |
| Input | Text | Text |
| ReasoningSpends extra tokens thinking before it answers | Yes | No |
| Tool calling | Yes | Yes |
| Licence | Proprietary | Apache 2.0 |
| Open weightsCan you download and run it yourself | No | Yes |
| Price | ||
| Input priceUSD per million tokens in | $0.20 | $0.30 |
| Output priceUSD per million tokens out | $1.50 | $1.20 |
| Blended 3:1A 3-in-to-1-out million-token mix — a fairer single number than input price alone | $0.525 | $0.525Cheapest |
| Price note | First-party API rate. | Open weights — this is a representative hosting rate, not a first-party price. Running it yourself costs only hardware. |
| Published benchmarks | ||
| SWE-bench Verified500 human-validated GitHub issues from real Python repositories. The model must produce a patch that makes the project's own tests pass. | ||
| LiveCodeBenchCompetitive-programming problems collected after each model's training cutoff, so contamination cannot inflate the score. | Not reported | |
| Links | Full page | Hugging Face · Full page |
| Row verified | 2026-08 | 2026-08 |
Where these numbers come from
Every score on this page is a published figure, taken from the model's own card, system card, technical report or release post, or from a public leaderboard. CorX Labs did not run these evaluations. Most are self-reported by the lab that built the model, which means they were produced under that lab's own choice of prompt, scaffold and number of attempts — so treat them as a starting point for a shortlist, not as a settled ranking.
A score someone other than the model's maker measured is marked Independent and names its measurer. Those are the stronger numbers on this page — an outside harness has no reason to flatter anyone — and there are not many of them.
Where a figure has not been published, the cell reads Not reported rather than an estimate. Nothing here is inferred, interpolated or guessed. Each model records the month its row was last checked. Full method and caveats.
Questions
Grok Code Fast 1 or Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B?
Is Grok Code Fast 1 better than Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B?
Grok Code Fast 1 wins 1 of the 1 benchmarks both models report, Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B wins 0, though the gaps are small. The average gap across shared tests is 1.2 points.
Which is cheaper, Grok Code Fast 1 or Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B?
Both cost $0.525 per million tokens on a 3:1 input-to-output mix.
What is the difference between Grok Code Fast 1 and Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B?
Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B has open weights under Apache 2.0, so it can run on your own hardware with no per-token cost and no dependency on an API staying available. The other is API-only. Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B takes 262K tokens of context against 256K — 1.0× more room for long documents or a large codebase. Grok Code Fast 1 is a reasoning model and the other is not, which usually means better maths and multi-step logic in exchange for higher latency and more billed output tokens.
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