Model comparison
Claude Opus 4.1 vs Qwen3.5-9B
Claude Opus 4.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.0 to 33.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 267× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 7 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 7 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.1 scores higher in 3 categories and Qwen3.5-9B in 2 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in agentic & tool use, where Claude Opus 4.1 leads 35.0 to 14.5.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Terminal-Bench: 38% for Claude Opus 4.1 and 9.2% for Qwen3.5-9B.
- Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $15 / $75 for Claude Opus 4.1.
- Qwen3.5-9B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 200K.
- Qwen3.5-9B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Opus 4.1 | Qwen3.5-9B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 41.0 | 33.8 |
| Released | 2025-08-05 | 2026-02-23 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 200K | 262K |
| Max output | 32K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $15 | $0.10 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $75 | $0.15 |
| Results tracked | 48 | 10 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Opus 4.1 leads
Claude Opus 4.1: 44.4 (#73), Qwen3.5-9B: 35.9 (#217)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | 73.3% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1390 | — |
| SciCode | — | 27.5% |
| WeirdML | 45.9% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1479 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 674.77 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.34 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 4.1 leads
Claude Opus 4.1: 35.0 (#41), Qwen3.5-9B: 14.5 (#151)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 38% | 9.2% |
| GDPval | 43.6% | — |
| Cybench | 42% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 48.3% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1148 | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 66.8% | — |
Reasoning Claude Opus 4.1 leads
Claude Opus 4.1: 32.2 (#76), Qwen3.5-9B: 23.1 (#182)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 7% | 12% |
| DTBench | 80% | 71.2% |
| LMCA | 37.1% | 24.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 144.12 | 139.46 |
| SimpleBench | 60% | — |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| EnigmaEval | 7.2% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 7.9% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1443 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 21% | — |
| ForecastBench | 62 | — |
Math Qwen3.5-9B leads
Claude Opus 4.1: 22.3 (#277), Qwen3.5-9B: 34.8 (#192)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 68.9% | 61.7% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 12.6% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 2.4% | — |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 48.5% |
| LMArena Math | 1431 | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 7.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 4.2% | — |
Knowledge Qwen3.5-9B leads
Claude Opus 4.1: 42.0 (#101), Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#84)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 77.3% | 79% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 11.5% | — |
| Confabulations | 17.1% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 11.8% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1439 | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.1: 26.8 (#119), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| VPCT | 35% | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.1: 52.0 (#95), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1405 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1427 | — |
| LMArena French | 1431 | — |
| LMArena German | 1413 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1378 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1380 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1422 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1448 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.1: 75.6 (#58), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1435 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.1: 44.5 (#63), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1455 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.1: 62.4 (#74), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1419 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1412 | — |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 84.7% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1444 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Opus 4.1 better than Qwen3.5-9B?
Claude Opus 4.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.0 to 33.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 267× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.1 or Qwen3.5-9B?
Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.1 lists at $15 and $75.
Is Claude Opus 4.1 or Qwen3.5-9B better for coding?
Claude Opus 4.1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 44.4 versus 35.9 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3.5-9B does, with 262K tokens against 200K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.1 and Qwen3.5-9B share?
7 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.1 has 48 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.