Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Opus 4.8 vs Qwen3.5 35B-A3B

Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 42.0 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5 35B-A3B costs 15× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 27 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 4.8 Anthropic

60.7

Rank #13 Confirmed

Qwen3.5 35B-A3B Alibaba (Qwen)

42.0

Rank #123 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 27 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher in 8 categories and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Opus 4.8 leads 64.7 to 24.6.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is MathArena Final-Answer Competitions: 91.8% for Claude Opus 4.8 and 56% for Qwen3.5 35B-A3B.
  • Qwen3.5 35B-A3B is cheaper at $0.25 / $2 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.8.
  • Claude Opus 4.8 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
  • Qwen3.5 35B-A3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Opus 4.8Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
ProviderAnthropicAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index60.742.0
Released2026-05-282026-02-01
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M262K
Max output128K66K
Input $ / M tokens$5$0.25
Output $ / M tokens$25$2
Results tracked6528

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 59.9 (#12), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 33.8 (#251)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena WebDev15561254
SciCode53.5%29.3%
LMArena Coding14901410
DeepSWE59%—
FrontierCode46.5%—
GSO47.1%—
WeirdML82.9%—
ALE-Bench1,564—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.8: 47.6 (#11), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: —

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
APEX-Agents48.9%—
OSWorld 2.020.6%—
Remote Labor Index8.3%—
τ²-bench Banking39.7%—
DeepResearch Bench50.2%—
PostTrainBench33.8%—
GBAEval70.9%—
GDP.pdf24%—
LMArena Search1204—
Vending-Bench 25,787—

Reasoning Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 64.7 (#16), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 24.6 (#161)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
CritPt20.9%0.6%
Chess Puzzles34%10%
LMArena Hard Prompts14821400
DTBench94.9%80%
LMCA57.5%29.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index158.21142.52
ARC-AGI-272.1%—
SimpleBench64.8%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark88.8%—
NYT Connections (extended)91.1%—
ARC-AGI-192.5%—
EnigmaEval23.5%—
EBR-Bench28.6%—
Mystery Game Puzzles36%—
Surface Evolver Bench87.5%—
Bench to the Future 30.14—
ForecastBench59.9—

Math Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 78.4 (#13), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 39.9 (#97)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions91.8%56%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202598.3%70%
LMArena Math14871404
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)80%—
FrontierMath Tier 456.1%—
ProofBench69%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)47.2%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)31.3%—

Knowledge Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 61.3 (#29), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 47.8 (#79)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
GPQA Diamond91%83.5%
LMArena Expert15021408
SimpleQA Verified53%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate—10.5%

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.8: 42.9 (#26), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: —

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Vision1294—
Blueprint-Bench 214.5%—
Furniture Assembly42.5%—
LMArena Document1475—

Multilingual Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 55.2 (#33), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 50.0 (#127)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Non-English14501378
LMArena Chinese15071457
LMArena French14811412
LMArena German14721367
LMArena Japanese14401325
LMArena Korean14321356
LMArena Russian14741376
LMArena Spanish14661392

Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 77.4 (#24), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 72.8 (#128)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Instruction Following14761379

Long Context Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 45.4 (#35), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 42.4 (#127)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Longer Query14831389

Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 72.0 (#16), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 57.9 (#124)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Text14611395
LMArena Creative Writing14541346
LMArena Multi-Turn14761390
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1840—
EQ-Bench 41281—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than Qwen3.5 35B-A3B?

Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 42.0 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5 35B-A3B costs 15× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or Qwen3.5 35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5 35B-A3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $2 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.8 lists at $5 and $25.

Is Claude Opus 4.8 or Qwen3.5 35B-A3B better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 59.9 versus 33.8 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 4.8 does, with 1M tokens against 262K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.8 and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B share?

27 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.8 has 65 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B has 28.

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