Model comparison
Claude Opus 5.5 vs Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 68.6 to 38.1 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct costs 2.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 16 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 16 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher in 9 categories and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Opus 5.5 leads 80.2 to 25.5.
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is cheaper at $1.50 / $7.50 per million input/output tokens, against $4 / $20 for Claude Opus 5.5.
- Claude Opus 5.5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 68.6 | 38.1 |
| Released | 2026-09-22 | 2025-04 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 262K |
| Max output | 128K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $4 | $1.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $20 | $7.50 |
| Results tracked | 44 | 25 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 71.9 (#3), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 35.5 (#223)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1813 | 1275 |
| LMArena Coding | 1547 | 1412 |
| ALE-Bench | 2,147 | 461.45 |
| FrontierCode | 54.6% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 55.4% |
| CursorBench | 57.8% | — |
| FrontierSWE | 62.3% | — |
| SciCode | 66.9% | — |
| GSO | — | 4.9% |
| WeirdML | — | 41.2% |
| MirrorCode | 77.4% | — |
| AlgoTune | — | 1.44 |
Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 45.3 (#15), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 23.9 (#123)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 27.2% |
| APEX-Agents | 73.5% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 30.6% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 9,235 | — |
Reasoning Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 80.2 (#3), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 25.5 (#149)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1535 | 1372 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 93.3% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 49.5% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 88.5% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 98.5% | — |
| CritPt | 31.7% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 71.4% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 71% | — |
| DTBench | 98.9% | — |
| LMCA | 68.2% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 167.33 | — |
Math Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 91.8 (#3), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 37.6 (#150)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1506 | 1365 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 91.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 95% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 100% | — |
| ProofBench | 100% | — |
| FrontierMath Erdős | 2.9% | — |
Knowledge Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 66.4 (#10), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 37.0 (#162)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1547 | 1338 |
| GPQA Diamond | 90.6% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 72.2% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Opus 5.5: 57.8 (#1), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1321 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 51.2% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 83.3% | — |
Multilingual Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 59.1 (#2), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 47.7 (#148)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1507 | 1346 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1588 | 1357 |
| LMArena French | 1514 | 1398 |
| LMArena Russian | 1520 | 1366 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1507 | 1360 |
| LMArena German | — | 1325 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1310 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1305 |
Instruction Following Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 80.0 (#3), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 71.6 (#147)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1537 | 1355 |
Long Context Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 47.1 (#19), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 42.0 (#131)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1532 | 1378 |
Writing & Preference Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 78.2 (#3), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 55.3 (#147)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1515 | 1357 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1533 | 1333 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1499 | 1365 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 2050 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Opus 5.5 better than Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?
Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 68.6 to 38.1 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct costs 2.7× 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-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?
Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is cheaper. It lists at $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 5.5 lists at $4 and $20.
Is Claude Opus 5.5 or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct better for coding?
Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 71.9 versus 35.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Opus 5.5 does, with 1M tokens against 262K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 5.5 and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct share?
16 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 5.5 has 44 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has 25.