The closest alternative to Qwen3.5-27B is Kimi K2.5 — comparable intelligence (37.3 vs 37.2); for a cheaper option, MiMo-V2.5 runs $0.140/M vs $0.195/M; for more speed, gpt-oss-120b (free) hits 503 t/s; and the best open-weight substitute is MiniMax M3.
Kimi K2.5 is the closest alternative to Qwen3.5-27B, with an Intelligence Index of 37.3 (Qwen3.5-27B scores 37.2) at $0.375 per million input tokens.
Yes — MiMo-V2.5 costs $0.140 per million input tokens versus $0.195 for Qwen3.5-27B, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
MiniMax M3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to Qwen3.5-27B — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 54.7 on intelligence.