Model comparison
Claude Opus 5.5 vs Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 68.6 to 43.0 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct costs 9.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 14 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 14 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 5.5 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 math, where Claude Opus 5.5 leads 91.8 to 38.8.
- Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is cheaper at $0.50 / $2 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-Next 80B-A3B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 68.6 | 43.0 |
| Released | 2026-09-22 | 2025-09 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 131K |
| Max output | 128K | 33K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $4 | $0.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $20 | $2 |
| 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-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 42.5 (#98)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1547 | 1440 |
| FrontierCode | 54.6% | — |
| CursorBench | 57.8% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1813 | — |
| FrontierSWE | 62.3% | — |
| SciCode | 66.9% | — |
| MirrorCode | 77.4% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 2,147 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude Opus 5.5: 45.3 (#15), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| 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-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 31.1 (#81)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1535 | 1428 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 93.3% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 66.7% |
| 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-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 38.8 (#126)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1506 | 1440 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 91.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 95% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 100% | — |
| ProofBench | 100% | — |
| Omni-MATH | — | 46.7% |
| FrontierMath Erdős | 2.9% | — |
Knowledge Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 66.4 (#10), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 41.8 (#106)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1547 | 1417 |
| GPQA Diamond | 90.6% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 72.2% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 78.6% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 9.3% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 63% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Opus 5.5: 57.8 (#1), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B 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-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 52.1 (#93)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1507 | 1407 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1588 | 1460 |
| LMArena French | 1514 | 1413 |
| LMArena Russian | 1520 | 1404 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1507 | 1435 |
| LMArena German | — | 1417 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1395 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1364 |
Instruction Following Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 80.0 (#3), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 70.8 (#159)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1537 | 1389 |
| IFEval | — | 81% |
Long Context Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 47.1 (#19), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 37.0 (#223)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1532 | 1403 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 55.6% |
Writing & Preference Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 78.2 (#3), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 58.0 (#121)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1515 | 1417 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1533 | 1334 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1499 | 1416 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 2050 | — |
| WildBench | — | 80.7% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Opus 5.5 better than Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct?
Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 68.6 to 43.0 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct costs 9.1× 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-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 5.5 lists at $4 and $20.
Is Claude Opus 5.5 or Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct better for coding?
Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 71.9 versus 42.5 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-Next 80B-A3B Instruct share?
14 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 5.5 has 44 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct has 25.