Model comparison
Claude Opus 5 vs Qwen3.5-9B
Claude Opus 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 67.7 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 89× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 8 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 5 scores higher in 5 categories and Qwen3.5-9B in 0 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Opus 5 leads 77.1 to 22.5.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is LMCA: 64.5% for Claude Opus 5 and 24.5% for Qwen3.5-9B.
- Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 5.
- Claude Opus 5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
- Qwen3.5-9B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Opus 5 | Qwen3.5-9B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 67.7 | 33.3 |
| Released | 2026-07-24 | 2026-02-23 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 262K |
| Max output | 128K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $5 | $0.10 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $25 | $0.15 |
| Results tracked | 57 | 10 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Opus 5 leads
Claude Opus 5: 67.0 (#5), Qwen3.5-9B: 35.3 (#213)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 56.4% | 27.5% |
| DeepSWE | 73.6% | — |
| FrontierCode | 53.4% | — |
| CursorBench | 46.6% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1694 | — |
| FrontierSWE | 52% | — |
| WeirdML | 91.8% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1533 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 2,165 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 5 leads
Claude Opus 5: 55.5 (#1), Qwen3.5-9B: 14.4 (#143)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 9.2% |
| APEX-Agents | 65.8% | — |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 31.4% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 48.7% | — |
| PostTrainBench | 35% | — |
| BALROG | 63.4% | — |
| GBAEval | 79.6% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 24% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 11,182 | — |
Reasoning Claude Opus 5 leads
Claude Opus 5: 77.1 (#3), Qwen3.5-9B: 22.5 (#178)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 29.1% | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 42% | 12% |
| DTBench | 97.9% | 71.2% |
| LMCA | 64.5% | 24.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 162.67 | 139.45 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 90.4% | — |
| SimpleBench | 80.6% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 94.3% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 97.5% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 45.7% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1525 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 59% | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.12 | — |
Math Claude Opus 5 leads
Claude Opus 5: 86.1 (#6), Qwen3.5-9B: 33.5 (#174)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 98.9% | 61.7% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 85.6% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 73.2% | — |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 48.5% |
| ProofBench | 99% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1533 | — |
Knowledge Claude Opus 5 leads
Claude Opus 5: 66.8 (#8), Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#77)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 93.9% | 79% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 59.9% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1558 | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Opus 5: 51.1 (#6), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1321 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 30.4% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 60.8% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1516 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Claude Opus 5: 58.8 (#3), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1500 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1575 | — |
| LMArena French | 1522 | — |
| LMArena German | 1522 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1510 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1526 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1507 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1519 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Claude Opus 5: 79.3 (#5), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1516 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Claude Opus 5: 46.5 (#20), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1516 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Claude Opus 5: 79.3 (#2), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1506 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1491 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 2133 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1385 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1496 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Opus 5 better than Qwen3.5-9B?
Claude Opus 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 67.7 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 89× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 5 or Qwen3.5-9B?
Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 5 lists at $5 and $25.
Is Claude Opus 5 or Qwen3.5-9B better for coding?
Claude Opus 5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 67.0 versus 35.3 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Opus 5 does, with 1M tokens against 262K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 5 and Qwen3.5-9B share?
8 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 5 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.