Model comparison

Claude Opus 4.6 vs Qwen3.6 27B

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 42.2 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.6 27B costs 7.4× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 9 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 4.6 Anthropic

58.2

Rank #20 Confirmed

Qwen3.6 27B Alibaba (Qwen)

42.2

Rank #117 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 9 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher in 5 categories and Qwen3.6 27B in 0 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Opus 4.6 leads 57.8 to 25.0.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3): 66% for Claude Opus 4.6 and 35.1% for Qwen3.6 27B.
  • Qwen3.6 27B is cheaper at $0.60 / $3.60 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.6.
  • Claude Opus 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
  • Qwen3.6 27B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Opus 4.6 and Qwen3.6 27B specifications
Claude Opus 4.6Qwen3.6 27B
ProviderAnthropicAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index58.242.2
Released2026-02-042026-04-22
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M262K
Max output128K66K
Input $ / M tokens$5$0.60
Output $ / M tokens$25$3.60
Results tracked6811

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.2 (#20), Qwen3.6 27B: 39.1 (#163)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3.6 27B
SWE-bench Verified78.7%—
FrontierCode26.6%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)75.6%—
LMArena WebDev1547—
SWE-bench Multilingual72%—
SciCode—37.3%
GSO41.2%—
WeirdML78%—
LMArena Coding1536—
ALE-Bench996.5—
AlgoTune1.47—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.6: 51.1 (#4), Qwen3.6 27B: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3.6 27B
Terminal-Bench79.8%—
APEX-Agents46.3%—
Remote Labor Index4.2%—
τ²-bench Banking27.3%—
Cybench93%—
DeepResearch Bench55.3%—
GBAEval44.1%—
LMArena Search1253—
METR Time Horizons78.9%—
Vending-Bench 28,018—

Reasoning Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.8 (#23), Qwen3.6 27B: 25.0 (#153)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3.6 27B
Chess Puzzles17%22%
Mystery Game Puzzles25%7%
DTBench91.2%78.1%
LMCA55.8%34.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index155.24146.5
ARC-AGI-269.2%—
SimpleBench67.6%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark83.6%—
NYT Connections (extended)92.1%—
ARC-AGI-194%—
CritPt—0.9%
EnigmaEval7.6%—
Thematic Generalization80.6%—
EBR-Bench12.7%—
LMArena Hard Prompts1527—
ForecastBench60—

Math Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 63.0 (#31), Qwen3.6 27B: 48.5 (#62)

Knowledge Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 61.9 (#26), Qwen3.6 27B: 52.4 (#63)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3.6 27B
GPQA Diamond90.5%85.9%
Humanity's Last Exam34.4%—
SimpleQA Verified47%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate12.2%—
LMArena Expert1546—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.6: 37.3 (#74), Qwen3.6 27B: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3.6 27B
LMArena Vision1316—
Furniture Assembly28.3%—
LMArena Document1507—

Multilingual Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.9 (#6), Qwen3.6 27B: —

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3.6 27B
LMArena Non-English1489—
LMArena Chinese1551—
LMArena French1513—
LMArena German1502—
LMArena Japanese1484—
LMArena Korean1464—
LMArena Russian1497—
LMArena Spanish1510—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.6: 79.5 (#4), Qwen3.6 27B: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3.6 27B
LMArena Instruction Following1523—

Long Context Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.6: 48.1 (#13), Qwen3.6 27B: —

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3.6 27B
CL-bench20.7%—
CL-bench Life17%—
LMArena Longer Query1520—

Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 73.5 (#10), Qwen3.6 27B: 50.3 (#181)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3.6 27B
EQ-Bench 412231026
LMArena Text1503—
LMArena Creative Writing1505—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1809—
LMArena Multi-Turn1513—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Qwen3.6 27B?

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 42.2 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.6 27B costs 7.4× 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 Qwen3.6 27B?

Qwen3.6 27B is cheaper. It lists at $0.60 per million input tokens and $3.60 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.6 lists at $5 and $25.

Is Claude Opus 4.6 or Qwen3.6 27B better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 57.2 versus 39.1 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 4.6 does, with 1M tokens against 262K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.6 and Qwen3.6 27B share?

9 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.6 has 68 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 27B has 11.

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