Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Opus 4.6 vs Qwen3 235B-A22B

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 43.5 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 235B-A22B costs 8.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 36 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 4.6 Anthropic

58.2

Rank #20 Confirmed

Qwen3 235B-A22B Alibaba (Qwen)

43.5

Rank #91 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 36 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher in 9 categories and Qwen3 235B-A22B in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Opus 4.6 leads 57.8 to 15.7.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is ARC-AGI-1: 94% for Claude Opus 4.6 and 11% for Qwen3 235B-A22B.
  • Qwen3 235B-A22B is cheaper at $0.70 / $2.80 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.6.
  • Claude Opus 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
  • Qwen3 235B-A22B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Opus 4.6Qwen3 235B-A22B
ProviderAnthropicAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index58.243.5
Released2026-02-042025-04
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M131K
Max output128K16K
Input $ / M tokens$5$0.70
Output $ / M tokens$25$2.80
Results tracked6849

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.2 (#20), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 44.3 (#75)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3 235B-A22B
WeirdML78%41%
LMArena Coding15361445
SWE-bench Verified78.7%—
FrontierCode26.6%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)75.6%—
Aider Polyglot—59.6%
LMArena WebDev1547—
SWE-bench Multilingual72%—
SciCode—42.4%
GSO41.2%—
ALE-Bench996.5—
AlgoTune1.47—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 51.1 (#4), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 33.9 (#51)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3 235B-A22B
Vending-Bench 28,018-11.34
Terminal-Bench79.8%—
APEX-Agents46.3%—
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—52.1%
Remote Labor Index4.2%—
τ²-bench Banking27.3%—
Cybench93%—
DeepResearch Bench55.3%—
GBAEval44.1%—
LMArena Search1253—
METR Time Horizons78.9%—

Reasoning Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.8 (#23), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 15.7 (#311)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3 235B-A22B
ARC-AGI-269.2%1.3%
SimpleBench67.6%31%
Kagi LLM Benchmark83.6%69.4%
ARC-AGI-194%11%
Chess Puzzles17%12%
LMArena Hard Prompts15271433
Mystery Game Puzzles25%9%
DTBench91.2%80.3%
LMCA55.8%29.3%
Epoch Capabilities Index155.24143.85
ForecastBench6059.7
NYT Connections (extended)92.1%—
CritPt—0%
EnigmaEval7.6%—
Thematic Generalization80.6%—
EBR-Bench12.7%—

Math Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 63.0 (#31), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 50.4 (#57)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3 235B-A22B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202594.4%86.7%
LMArena Math15191432
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)40.7%8.5%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)22.9%0%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)66%—
FrontierMath Tier 426.8%—
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions78.5%—
ProofBench50%—
Omni-MATH—71.8%
MATH Level 5—68.9%

Knowledge Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 61.9 (#26), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 49.6 (#73)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3 235B-A22B
GPQA Diamond90.5%80.1%
SimpleQA Verified47%40.4%
Vectara Hallucination Rate12.2%9.3%
LMArena Expert15461463
Humanity's Last Exam34.4%—
MMLU-Pro—84.4%
Confabulations—15.6%
GPQA (HELM)—72.7%

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.6: 37.3 (#74), Qwen3 235B-A22B: —

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Vision1316—
Furniture Assembly28.3%—
LMArena Document1507—

Multilingual Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.9 (#6), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 52.3 (#89)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Non-English14891409
LMArena Chinese15511481
LMArena French15131445
LMArena German15021433
LMArena Japanese14841399
LMArena Korean14641391
LMArena Russian14971411
LMArena Spanish15101430

Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 79.5 (#4), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 72.6 (#136)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Instruction Following15231408
IFEval—83.5%

Long Context Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 48.1 (#13), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 46.1 (#26)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Longer Query15201426
Fiction.LiveBench—75%
CL-bench20.7%—
CL-bench Life17%—

Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 73.5 (#10), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 59.6 (#108)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Text15031419
LMArena Creative Writing15051384
EQ-Bench Creative Writing18091366
LMArena Multi-Turn15131432
Short-Story Creative Writing—83%
WildBench—86.6%
EQ-Bench 41223—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Qwen3 235B-A22B?

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 43.5 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 235B-A22B costs 8.2× 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 Qwen3 235B-A22B?

Qwen3 235B-A22B is cheaper. It lists at $0.70 per million input tokens and $2.80 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.6 lists at $5 and $25.

Is Claude Opus 4.6 or Qwen3 235B-A22B better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 57.2 versus 44.3 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 4.6 does, with 1M tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.6 and Qwen3 235B-A22B share?

36 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.6 has 68 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 235B-A22B has 49.

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