Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Opus 5.5 vs Qwen3 8B

Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 68.5 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 8B costs 26× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 6 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 5.5 Anthropic

68.5

Rank #3 Confirmed

Qwen3 8B Alibaba (Qwen)

33.3

Rank #237 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 6 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher in 6 categories and Qwen3 8B in 0 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Opus 5.5 leads 79.5 to 16.1.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is LMCA: 68.2% for Claude Opus 5.5 and 8.8% for Qwen3 8B.
  • Qwen3 8B is cheaper at $0.18 / $0.70 per million input/output tokens, against $4 / $20 for Claude Opus 5.5.
  • Claude Opus 5.5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
  • Qwen3 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Opus 5.5Qwen3 8B
ProviderAnthropicAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index68.533.3
Released2026-09-222025-04
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M131K
Max output128K8K
Input $ / M tokens$4$0.18
Output $ / M tokens$20$0.70
Results tracked3511

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 71.4 (#1), Qwen3 8B: 33.4 (#245)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Qwen3 8B
SciCode66.9%22.6%
FrontierCode54.4%—
CursorBench57.8%—
LMArena WebDev1820—
FrontierSWE62.3%—
LMArena Coding1545—
MirrorCode77.4%—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 45.3 (#13), Qwen3 8B: 29.9 (#71)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Qwen3 8B
APEX-Agents73.5%—
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—42.6%
GDP.pdf30.6%—

Reasoning Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 79.5 (#2), Qwen3 8B: 16.1 (#299)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Qwen3 8B
CritPt31.7%0%
DTBench98.9%59.7%
LMCA68.2%8.8%
ARC-AGI-292.5%—
NYT Connections (extended)88.5%—
ARC-AGI-197.5%—
Chess Puzzles—5%
EBR-Bench71.4%—
LMArena Hard Prompts1545—
Mystery Game Puzzles71%—
Epoch Capabilities Index—136.17

Math Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 92.4 (#2), Qwen3 8B: 33.3 (#176)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Qwen3 8B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025100%56.1%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)91.2%—
FrontierMath Tier 495%—
ProofBench100%—

Knowledge Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 66.6 (#9), Qwen3 8B: 36.1 (#164)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Qwen3 8B
GPQA Diamond90.6%56.8%
SimpleQA Verified72.2%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate—4.8%
LMArena Expert1564—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Opus 5.5: 56.5 (#2), Qwen3 8B: —

BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Qwen3 8B
Furniture Assembly83.3%—

Multilingual Not comparable

Claude Opus 5.5: 59.8 (#1), Qwen3 8B: —

BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Qwen3 8B
LMArena Non-English1513—
LMArena Chinese1572—
LMArena Russian1532—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Claude Opus 5.5: 80.1 (#2), Qwen3 8B: —

BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Qwen3 8B
LMArena Instruction Following1535—

Long Context Claude Opus 5.5 leads

Claude Opus 5.5: 47.3 (#18), Qwen3 8B: 37.8 (#205)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Qwen3 8B
Fiction.LiveBench—62.1%
LMArena Longer Query1540—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Claude Opus 5.5: 78.7 (#3), Qwen3 8B: —

BenchmarkClaude Opus 5.5Qwen3 8B
LMArena Text1518—
LMArena Creative Writing1538—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing2050—
LMArena Multi-Turn1520—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 5.5 better than Qwen3 8B?

Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 68.5 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 8B costs 26× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 5.5 or Qwen3 8B?

Qwen3 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.18 per million input tokens and $0.70 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 5.5 lists at $4 and $20.

Is Claude Opus 5.5 or Qwen3 8B better for coding?

Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 71.4 versus 33.4 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 5.5 does, with 1M tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 5.5 and Qwen3 8B share?

6 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 5.5 has 35 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 8B has 11.

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