Qwen (Alibaba) vs Perplexity Comet
Which one should you pick? Here's the full breakdown.
Qwen (Alibaba)
Alibaba's open-weights + API family -- Qwen 3.6-Plus (Mar 30 2026, 1M context + always-on CoT + agentic tool-use), Qwen3.5 Small (2B runs on iPhone, 9B matches 120B-class models), plus Qwen3.5-Omni native multimodal. Apache 2.0 on the open sizes
Perplexity Comet
Perplexity's agentic AI browser -- FREE on all platforms as of 2026-03-18 (previously $200/mo Max-only). iOS, Android, Windows, Mac. Browses the web, executes multi-step tasks, and summarizes pages in-line. Comet Plus ($5/mo) adds premium publisher content
| Category | Qwen (Alibaba) | Perplexity Comet |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of Use | 7.0 | 8.0 |
| Output Quality | 9.0 | 8.0 |
| Value | 10.0 | 9.5 |
| Features | 9.0 | 8.0 |
| Overall | 8.8 | 8.4 |
Pricing Comparison
| Feature | Qwen (Alibaba) | Perplexity Comet |
|---|---|---|
| Free Tier | Yes | Yes |
| Starting Price | $0 | $0 |
Benchmark Head-to-Head
Qwen3.5-397B MoE benchmarks — Perplexity Comet has no published benchmarks
| Benchmark | Description | Score |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | Harder multi-subject reasoning | 83.5% |
| GPQA Diamond | Graduate-level science questions | 78.2% |
| AIME 2025 | 87% | |
| HumanEval | Python code generation | 92.5% |
| SWE-Bench Verified | 69.4% |
Which Should You Pick?
Pick Qwen (Alibaba) if...
- ✓Higher output quality (9 vs 8)
- ✓More features (9 vs 8)
Developers who want frontier-tier open weights with Apache 2.0 licensing. Qwen3-Coder-Next is arguably the best local coding model; Qwen3.5-397B is a top-3 open generalist.
Visit Qwen (Alibaba)Pick Perplexity Comet if...
- ✓Easier to use (8 vs 7)
Users who already use Perplexity for search and want an agent browser that can complete multi-step tasks (booking, research, shopping, document summarization) across tabs. Also a strong introduction to the AI-browser category for anyone curious but unwilling to pay $200/mo for a preview -- the 2026-03-18 free rollout makes evaluation risk-free.
Visit Perplexity CometOur Verdict
Qwen (Alibaba) edges out Perplexity Comet with a 8.8 vs 8.4 overall score. Both are solid picks, but Qwen (Alibaba) has the advantage in output quality.