Model comparison
Claude Opus 4.6 vs Qwen Max
Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 34.7 on the Noometry Index. Qwen Max costs 3.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 20 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 20 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher in 8 categories and Qwen Max in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Opus 4.6 leads 63.0 to 22.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 94.4% for Claude Opus 4.6 and 16.1% for Qwen Max.
- Qwen Max is cheaper at $1.60 / $6.40 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.6.
- Claude Opus 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 33K.
Side by side
| Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen Max | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 58.2 | 34.7 |
| Released | 2026-02-04 | 2024-04-03 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 1M | 33K |
| Max output | 128K | 8K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $5 | $1.60 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $25 | $6.40 |
| Results tracked | 68 | 23 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 57.2 (#20), Qwen Max: 30.7 (#292)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1536 | 1288 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 78.7% | — |
| FrontierCode | 26.6% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 75.6% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 21.8% |
| LMArena WebDev | 1547 | — |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 72% | — |
| GSO | 41.2% | — |
| WeirdML | 78% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 996.5 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.47 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.6: 51.1 (#4), Qwen Max: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 79.8% | — |
| APEX-Agents | 46.3% | — |
| Remote Labor Index | 4.2% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 27.3% | — |
| Cybench | 93% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 55.3% | — |
| GBAEval | 44.1% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1253 | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 78.9% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 8,018 | — |
Reasoning Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 57.8 (#23), Qwen Max: 25.1 (#151)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1527 | 1269 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 69.2% | — |
| SimpleBench | 67.6% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 83.6% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 92.1% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 94% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 17% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 7.6% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | 80.6% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 12.7% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 25% | — |
| DTBench | 91.2% | — |
| LMCA | 55.8% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 155.24 | — |
| ForecastBench | 60 | — |
Math Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 63.0 (#31), Qwen Max: 22.3 (#276)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 94.4% | 16.1% |
| LMArena Math | 1519 | 1275 |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 40.7% | 1% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 66% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 26.8% | — |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | 78.5% | — |
| ProofBench | 50% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 67.2% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 22.9% | — |
Knowledge Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 61.9 (#26), Qwen Max: 30.3 (#228)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 90.5% | 56.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1546 | 1248 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 34.4% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 47% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.2% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.6: 37.3 (#74), Qwen Max: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1316 | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 28.3% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1507 | — |
Multilingual Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 57.9 (#6), Qwen Max: 41.8 (#202)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1489 | 1263 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1551 | 1254 |
| LMArena French | 1513 | 1330 |
| LMArena German | 1502 | 1254 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1484 | 1205 |
| LMArena Korean | 1464 | 1142 |
| LMArena Russian | 1497 | 1274 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1510 | 1290 |
Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 79.5 (#4), Qwen Max: 66.5 (#208)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1523 | 1262 |
Long Context Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 48.1 (#13), Qwen Max: 39.4 (#180)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1520 | 1288 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 66.7% |
| CL-bench | 20.7% | — |
| CL-bench Life | 17% | — |
Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 73.5 (#10), Qwen Max: 47.8 (#205)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1503 | 1282 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1505 | 1248 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1513 | 1277 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1809 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1223 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Qwen Max?
Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 34.7 on the Noometry Index. Qwen Max costs 3.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.6 or Qwen Max?
Qwen Max is cheaper. It lists at $1.60 per million input tokens and $6.40 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.6 lists at $5 and $25.
Is Claude Opus 4.6 or Qwen Max better for coding?
Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 57.2 versus 30.7 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Opus 4.6 does, with 1M tokens against 33K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.6 and Qwen Max share?
20 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.6 has 68 scored results on Noometry and Qwen Max has 23.