Model comparison

Claude Opus 4.6 vs Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 43.0 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct costs 11× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 19 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 4.6 Anthropic

58.2

Rank #20 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 19 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher in 8 categories and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Opus 4.6 leads 57.8 to 31.1.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 83.6% for Claude Opus 4.6 and 66.7% for Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct.
  • Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is cheaper at $0.50 / $2 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-Next 80B-A3B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Opus 4.6 and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct specifications
Claude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
ProviderAnthropicAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index58.243.0
Released2026-02-042025-09
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M131K
Max output128K33K
Input $ / M tokens$5$0.50
Output $ / M tokens$25$2
Results tracked6825

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.2 (#20), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 42.5 (#98)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Coding15361440
SWE-bench Verified78.7%—
FrontierCode26.6%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)75.6%—
LMArena WebDev1547—
SWE-bench Multilingual72%—
GSO41.2%—
WeirdML78%—
ALE-Bench996.5—
AlgoTune1.47—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.6: 51.1 (#4), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
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-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 31.1 (#81)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
Kagi LLM Benchmark83.6%66.7%
LMArena Hard Prompts15271428
ARC-AGI-269.2%—
SimpleBench67.6%—
NYT Connections (extended)92.1%—
ARC-AGI-194%—
Chess Puzzles17%—
EnigmaEval7.6%—
Thematic Generalization80.6%—
EBR-Bench12.7%—
Mystery Game Puzzles25%—
DTBench91.2%—
LMCA55.8%—
Epoch Capabilities Index155.24—
ForecastBench60—

Math Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 63.0 (#31), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 38.8 (#126)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Math15191440
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)66%—
FrontierMath Tier 426.8%—
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions78.5%—
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202594.4%—
ProofBench50%—
Omni-MATH—46.7%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)40.7%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)22.9%—

Knowledge Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 61.9 (#26), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 41.8 (#106)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
Vectara Hallucination Rate12.2%9.3%
LMArena Expert15461417
GPQA Diamond90.5%—
Humanity's Last Exam34.4%—
SimpleQA Verified47%—
MMLU-Pro—78.6%
GPQA (HELM)—63%

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.6: 37.3 (#74), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Vision1316—
Furniture Assembly28.3%—
LMArena Document1507—

Multilingual Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.9 (#6), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 52.1 (#93)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Non-English14891407
LMArena Chinese15511460
LMArena French15131413
LMArena German15021417
LMArena Japanese14841395
LMArena Korean14641364
LMArena Russian14971404
LMArena Spanish15101435

Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 79.5 (#4), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 70.8 (#159)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Instruction Following15231389
IFEval—81%

Long Context Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 48.1 (#13), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 37.0 (#223)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Longer Query15201403
Fiction.LiveBench—55.6%
CL-bench20.7%—
CL-bench Life17%—

Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 73.5 (#10), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 58.0 (#121)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Text15031417
LMArena Creative Writing15051334
LMArena Multi-Turn15131416
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1809—
WildBench—80.7%
EQ-Bench 41223—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct?

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 43.0 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct costs 11× 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-Next 80B-A3B Instruct?

Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is cheaper. It lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $2 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.6 lists at $5 and $25.

Is Claude Opus 4.6 or Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 57.2 versus 42.5 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-Next 80B-A3B Instruct share?

19 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.6 has 68 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct has 25.

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