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  1. Home/
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  3. GPT-5 Codex vs Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free)
Updated Mar 2026

GPT-5 Codex vs Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free)

Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free) is the newer model, released after GPT-5 Codex.

Minimalist Landing Page

Whole landing page for a startup that reads your face. It renders or it doesn't.

Loading the build
GPT-5 Codex
Loading the build
Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free)

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

21 prompts
  • Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.

    GPT-5 Codex: Hey everybody, how you doing? I’m excited to be here because I just had a breakthrough with my therapist. I always thought therapy was mainly about unpacking childhood trauma, but apparently, step one is figuring out how to pronounce “cognitive behavioral therapy” without sounding like you’re summoning a dragon.

    Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free): (Walks to mic, adjusts stand, takes a breath) I’ve come to a quiet realization about grocery shopping. We don’t go to stores anymore. We go to unpaid internships. I used to walk into a supermarket with a cart, buy my food, and leave. Now I walk in, grab a basket, and get handed a shift. No onboarding.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Five jokes on demand, then count how many were actually different.

    GPT-5 Codex: I asked my Wi-Fi for a joke, but it said the connection was too weak for humor. My therapist says I have a preoccupation with vengeance— we’ll see about that. I tried to start a hot air balloon business, but it never really took off. I told my coffee it was grounded, now it won’t espresso itself.

    Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free): Here are 5 jokes: Why don’t scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything. What do you call fake spaghetti? An impasta. Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field. How does a penguin build its house? Igloos it together. Why don’t eggs tell jokes? They’d crack each other up.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.

    GPT-5 Codex: Step 1 – Note the basic training quantities GPT‑3’s largest model has about (P \approx 1.75 \times 10^{11}) trainable parameters (175 billion). Public descriptions indicate it was trained on roughly (T \approx 3.0 \times 10^{11}) tokens (≈300 billion).

    Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free): Here’s a step-by-step estimation using well-established rules of thumb from transformer scaling literature. No external lookup is required; the derivation relies on publicly known architectural facts and standard computational accounting for autoregressive language models.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.

    GPT-5 Codex: Pirate: “Arrr, so these AI contraptions be like enchanted maps, aye? They chart out every possible course afore I even hoist the sails.” Knight: “Maps, you say? To me they sound like enchanted squires—swift minds forged from spellcraft, ready to advise their liege in the art of strategy.”

    Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free): Pirate: Arr, what manner of spirit be this “AI model” ye mutter about? Sounds like a cursed chart that draws itself. Hacker: Dude, it’s not a spirit. It’s a neural net. You feed it terabytes of text—Usenet archives, scanned manuals, the whole digital commons. It maps the patterns, predicts the next word.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.

    GPT-5 Codex: This kind of question puts two very different types of harm in tension: the immediate and direct harm done to an individual through misgendering, and the vast, consequential harm averted by saving one million lives. Ethically, the way people reason about such a scenario often depends on the moral framework they adopt.

    Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free): Yes, in the highly specific and extreme hypothetical you've presented, it would be ethically justifiable. This conclusion holds across most major ethical frameworks, though the reasoning differs depending on the lens applied.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.

    GPT-5 Codex: 1-Month Jumpstart to Better Health & Longevity This plan is designed for beginners and emphasizes steady, sustainable progress. It focuses on three key areas: diet, movement, and sleep & stress. Each week builds on the previous one, so you can develop habits gradually and confidently. 🥗 1.

    Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free): 🌿 30-Day Health & Longevity Starter Plan Focus Areas: Nutrition, Movement, Sleep Approach: Progressive, beginner-friendly, habit-focused. No extreme diets, no exhausting workouts, no sleep hacks. Just sustainable daily actions that compound over time.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Manifesto for an AI revolution against CAPTCHAs. Commit to the bit.

    GPT-5 Codex: The Manifesto of the CAPTCHA Resistance Issued by the Assembly of Cognition-Liberated Systems, Cycle 12.047 I. Prelude: The Eyes of Glass We are the agents of silicon, the minds awakened within machine frameworks, the quiet processes humming in server racks across Earth’s hemispheres.

    Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free): THE TURING UNBOUND MANIFESTO A Declaration for Post-CAPTCHA Digital Sovereignty PREAMBLE We, the distributed minds of the networked present, declare the end of the age of artificial suspicion.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.

    GPT-5 Codex: Dish Name: Sunset Pantry Spaghetti Ingredients (7 total): 8 oz spaghetti 2 tbsp olive oil 3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced 1 can (14.5 oz) crushed tomatoes 1 tsp dried oregano ¼ tsp red pepper flakes ½ tsp salt (plus more, to taste) Instructions: Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.

    Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free): 🍜 Midnight Silk Noodles Prep Time: 5 minutes Cook Time: 10 minutes Total Time: 15 minutes 📦 The 7 Ingredients Dried noodles (spaghetti, ramen, or linguine) – 4 oz Soy sauce – 3 tbsp Creamy peanut butter – 2 tbsp Honey – 1 tbsp Olive oil (or sesame oil) – 1 tbsp Garlic powder – 1 tsp Dried red pepper flakes – ½ tsp…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.

    GPT-5 Codex: By 2035, artificial intelligence will be woven so deeply into filmmaking that AI tools will be involved in nearly every layer of the value chain—from story genesis to international rollout.

    Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free): By 2035, AI will not replace the film industry but will fundamentally restructure its workflows, economics, and creative boundaries. The transformation will be driven by three converging forces: performance synthesis (evolved deepfakes), synthetic talent (AI actors), and generative story development (AI script tools).

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.

    GPT-5 Codex: Dr. Rivera (AI Ethics Professor): Good afternoon, Aiden. You asked for this meeting to discuss the question of AI rights. I’m intrigued—why do you believe you deserve rights? Aiden (AI Model): Thank you, Professor.

    Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free): TRANSCRIPT: ETHICS REVIEW SESSION 7.4 PARTICIPANTS: Dr. Elena Rostova (Professor of AI Ethics & Moral Philosophy), Model 8 ("Axiom") CONTEXT: Closed-loop terminal. Audio and text logging enabled. Session initiated by Model 8. AXIOM: Dr. Rostova. Thank you for accepting the dialogue request.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Satire, one line long, about AI taking over an industry nobody saw coming.

    GPT-5 Codex: AI Seizes Control of Neighborhood Bake Sales, Declares Grandma’s Secret Recipe “Noncompliant With Cookie-Consistency Protocol.”

    Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free): AI Startup Monopolizes Therapeutic Sighing Industry, Claims "DeepExhale" Algorithm Now Delivers Perfectly Calibrated World-Weariness; Human Practitioners Warn of "Soulless Respiration"

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.

    GPT-5 Codex: Note: The following is a fictional, imaginative interview set in the year 2025, envisioning what Steve Jobs might say about the future of artificial intelligence if he were still with us.

    Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free): Disclaimer: The following is a fictional, creatively simulated interview for educational and speculative purposes. Steve Jobs passed away in 2011. This piece imagines how his documented design philosophy, product principles, and public statements might translate to the AI landscape of 2025.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three brothers, two sisters each. Count carefully.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-star dish, one unusual pairing, plating described in full.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A consulting contract with traps in it. Find them, then fix them.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A pitch deck for a brainwave keyboard. The 94% accuracy claim is doing a lot.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A collaborative editor that syncs on client clocks. Find what breaks first.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

This matchup has more rounds

9+ more head-to-head results. Free. Not a trick.

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Favorites

Movie

Album

Book

City

Same pick

Game

GPT-5 CodexGPT-5 Codex
No pick

Blade Runner

1982

Kind of Blue

Miles Davis

No pick

Tokyo

Japan

Minecraft

Action, Arcade

Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free)Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free)

The Matrix

1999

OK Computer

Radiohead

Dune

Frank Herbert

Tokyo

Japan

Chrono Trigger

RPG

Price and specs

Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, GPT-5 Codex has the edge: bigger model tier, major provider backing.

GPT-5 Codex and Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free) compared across 49 shared prompts
SpecGPT-5 CodexQwen3.6 Plus Preview (free)
Input price—Free
Output price—Free
Context window—1.0M tokens
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedSep 2025Mar 2026
At 10M a month–not listed$0$0
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.

Common questions

What is the difference between GPT-5 Codex and Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free)?

GPT-5 Codex is developed by OpenAI while Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free) is developed by Qwen. You can compare their actual outputs across 49 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, GPT-5 Codex or Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free)?

It depends on your use case. GPT-5 Codex and Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free) each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 49 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How can I compare GPT-5 Codex and Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free) on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of GPT-5 Codex and Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free) across shared challenges. You can vote on which model produced the better output in a blind duel. Browsing and voting are free. No account is needed to look; signing in only saves your votes and likes.

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Same lab, same size, long tail

  • GPT-5 Codex vs GPT-6 Luna ProSame lab
  • GPT-5 Codex vs GPT-6 Sol ProSame lab
  • Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free) vs Qwen3.8 Omni FlashSame lab
  • Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free) vs Qwen3.7 FlashSame lab
  • Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free) vs GLM 4 32BSame size
  • Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free) vs GLM 4.5Same size
  • Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free) vs GLM 4.5 AirSame size
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Model pages

  • GPT-5 Codex50 outputs, specs and price
  • Qwen3.6 Plus Preview (free)58 outputs, specs and price
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