Model comparison

Claude Opus 4.6 vs Qwen3.6 Flash

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.3 to 38.4 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.6 Flash costs 24× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 13 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 4.6 Anthropic

58.3

Rank #18 Confirmed

Qwen3.6 Flash Alibaba (Qwen)

38.4

Rank #176 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher in 3 categories and Qwen3.6 Flash in 0 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Opus 4.6 leads 57.7 to 28.4.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3): 66% for Claude Opus 4.6 and 22.5% for Qwen3.6 Flash.
  • Qwen3.6 Flash is cheaper at $0.19 / $1.13 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.6.

Side by side

Claude Opus 4.6 and Qwen3.6 Flash specifications
Claude Opus 4.6Qwen3.6 Flash
ProviderAnthropicAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index58.338.4
Released2026-02-042026-04-27
WeightsProprietaryProprietary
Context window1M1M
Max output128K66K
Input $ / M tokens$5$0.19
Output $ / M tokens$25$1.13
Results tracked6813

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Category by category

Coding Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.7 (#15), Qwen3.6 Flash: —

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3.6 Flash
ALE-Bench996.5326.4
SWE-bench Verified78.7%—
FrontierCode26.6%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)75.6%—
LMArena WebDev1546—
SWE-bench Multilingual72%—
GSO41.2%—
WeirdML78%—
LMArena Coding1535—
AlgoTune1.47—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.6: 51.0 (#4), Qwen3.6 Flash: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3.6 Flash
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: 57.7 (#21), Qwen3.6 Flash: 28.4 (#90)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3.6 Flash
SimpleBench67.6%35.2%
Chess Puzzles17%20%
Mystery Game Puzzles25%18%
DTBench91.2%77.1%
LMCA55.8%31%
Epoch Capabilities Index155.36143.26
ARC-AGI-269.2%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark83.6%—
NYT Connections (extended)92.1%—
ARC-AGI-194%—
EnigmaEval7.6%—
Thematic Generalization80.6%—
EBR-Bench12.7%—
LMArena Hard Prompts1527—
ForecastBench60—

Math Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 62.7 (#25), Qwen3.6 Flash: 38.0 (#88)

Knowledge Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 61.8 (#23), Qwen3.6 Flash: 42.2 (#90)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3.6 Flash
GPQA Diamond90.5%83.3%
SimpleQA Verified47%15.9%
Humanity's Last Exam34.4%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate12.2%—
LMArena Expert1546—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.6: 37.0 (#67), Qwen3.6 Flash: —

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

Multilingual Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.6: 58.2 (#4), Qwen3.6 Flash: —

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3.6 Flash
LMArena Non-English1490—
LMArena Chinese1551—
LMArena French1513—
LMArena German1504—
LMArena Japanese1484—
LMArena Korean1465—
LMArena Russian1497—
LMArena Spanish1512—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.6: 79.7 (#3), Qwen3.6 Flash: —

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

Long Context Not comparable

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

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

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.6: 73.7 (#9), Qwen3.6 Flash: —

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3.6 Flash
LMArena Text1504—
LMArena Creative Writing1506—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1809—
EQ-Bench 41223—
LMArena Multi-Turn1514—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Qwen3.6 Flash?

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.3 to 38.4 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.6 Flash costs 24× 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 Flash?

Qwen3.6 Flash is cheaper. It lists at $0.19 per million input tokens and $1.13 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.6 lists at $5 and $25.

Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 1M tokens.

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

13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.6 has 68 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Flash has 13.

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