Model comparison

Claude Opus 4.5 vs Qwen3.5-9B

Claude Opus 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.5 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 89× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 7 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 4.5 Anthropic

50.5

Rank #39 Confirmed

Qwen3.5-9B Alibaba (Qwen)

33.3

Rank #235 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 7 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.5 scores higher in 5 categories and Qwen3.5-9B in 0 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in agentic & tool use, where Claude Opus 4.5 leads 47.2 to 14.4.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Terminal-Bench: 63.1% for Claude Opus 4.5 and 9.2% for Qwen3.5-9B.
  • Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.5.
  • 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 4.5 and Qwen3.5-9B specifications
Claude Opus 4.5Qwen3.5-9B
ProviderAnthropicAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index50.533.3
Released2025-11-012026-02-23
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window200K262K
Max output64K66K
Input $ / M tokens$5$0.10
Output $ / M tokens$25$0.15
Results tracked6910

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 4.5 leads

Claude Opus 4.5: 55.4 (#21), Qwen3.5-9B: 35.3 (#213)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5Qwen3.5-9B
SWE-bench Verified76.7%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)76.8%—
LMArena WebDev1493—
SWE-bench Multilingual70.7%—
SciCode—27.5%
GSO26.5%—
WeirdML63.7%—
LMArena Coding1504—
ALE-Bench1,025—
AlgoTune1.77—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 4.5 leads

Claude Opus 4.5: 47.2 (#11), Qwen3.5-9B: 14.4 (#143)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5Qwen3.5-9B
Terminal-Bench63.1%9.2%
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard77.5%—
GDPval45.5%—
Remote Labor Index3.8%—
τ²-bench Airline84%—
τ²-bench Banking24.7%—
τ²-bench Retail79.6%—
τ²-bench Telecom92.3%—
Cybench82%—
DeepResearch Bench54.8%—
OSWorld66.3%—
BALROG43.5%—
LMArena Search1180—
METR Time Horizons75%—
Vending-Bench 24,967—

Reasoning Claude Opus 4.5 leads

Claude Opus 4.5: 42.5 (#43), Qwen3.5-9B: 22.5 (#178)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5Qwen3.5-9B
Chess Puzzles12%12%
DTBench89.9%71.2%
LMCA44.5%24.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index150.1139.45
ARC-AGI-237.6%—
SimpleBench62%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark80.2%—
NYT Connections (extended)52.5%—
ARC-AGI-180%—
CritPt—0.3%
EnigmaEval11.9%—
EBR-Bench14.3%—
LMArena Hard Prompts1476—
Mystery Game Puzzles22%—
ForecastBench60.7—

Math Claude Opus 4.5 leads

Claude Opus 4.5: 38.5 (#85), Qwen3.5-9B: 33.5 (#174)

Knowledge Claude Opus 4.5 leads

Claude Opus 4.5: 56.4 (#38), Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#77)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5Qwen3.5-9B
GPQA Diamond86%79%
Humanity's Last Exam25.2%—
SimpleQA Verified45.7%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate10.9%—
LMArena Expert1488—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.5: 31.1 (#99), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5Qwen3.5-9B
GeoBench75%—
VPCT40%—
Furniture Assembly28.3%—
LMArena Document1462—

Multilingual Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.5: 54.5 (#45), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5Qwen3.5-9B
LMArena Non-English1438—
LMArena Chinese1470—
LMArena French1471—
LMArena German1449—
LMArena Japanese1415—
LMArena Korean1424—
LMArena Russian1448—
LMArena Spanish1455—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.5: 77.7 (#20), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5Qwen3.5-9B
LMArena Instruction Following1478—

Long Context Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.5: 46.4 (#21), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5Qwen3.5-9B
CL-bench21.1%—
LMArena Longer Query1480—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.5: 68.2 (#28), Qwen3.5-9B: —

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5Qwen3.5-9B
LMArena Text1451—
LMArena Creative Writing1445—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1687—
LMArena Multi-Turn1466—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 4.5 better than Qwen3.5-9B?

Claude Opus 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.5 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 89× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.5 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 4.5 lists at $5 and $25.

Is Claude Opus 4.5 or Qwen3.5-9B better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.4 versus 35.3 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 4.5 and Qwen3.5-9B share?

7 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.5 has 69 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.

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