Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Qwen3.6 Flash
Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.6 Flash costs 14× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 13 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3.6 Flash in 2 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3.6 Flash leads 39.0 to 32.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is SimpleBench: 54.3% for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and 35.2% for Qwen3.6 Flash.
- Qwen3.6 Flash is cheaper at $0.19 / $1.13 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.5.
- Qwen3.6 Flash accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 200K.
Side by side
| Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Flash | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 44.1 | 38.8 |
| Released | 2025-09-29 | 2026-04-27 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 200K | 1M |
| Max output | 64K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $3 | $0.19 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $15 | $1.13 |
| Results tracked | 73 | 13 |
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Category by category
Coding Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 47.3 (#61), Qwen3.6 Flash: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| ALE-Bench | 796.15 | 326.4 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 71.3% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 71.4% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1393 | — |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 67% | — |
| SciCode | 44.7% | — |
| GSO | 14.7% | — |
| WeirdML | 47.7% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1489 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.52 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 38.3 (#32), Qwen3.6 Flash: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 46.5% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 73.2% | — |
| GDPval | 42.5% | — |
| Remote Labor Index | 2.1% | — |
| τ²-bench Airline | 72% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 25.3% | — |
| τ²-bench Retail | 72.4% | — |
| τ²-bench Telecom | 84.9% | — |
| Cybench | 60% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 52.6% | — |
| OSWorld | 62.9% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1159 | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 67.4% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 3,839 | — |
Reasoning Qwen3.6 Flash leads
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 26.9 (#125), Qwen3.6 Flash: 29.0 (#96)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| SimpleBench | 54.3% | 35.2% |
| Chess Puzzles | 12% | 20% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 17% | 18% |
| DTBench | 83.2% | 77.1% |
| LMCA | 38.8% | 31% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 146.84 | 143.26 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 13.6% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 57.9% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 37.3% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 63.7% | — |
| CritPt | 1.1% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 6% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 2.4% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1462 | — |
| ForecastBench | 61.9 | — |
Math Qwen3.6 Flash leads
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 32.3 (#216), Qwen3.6 Flash: 39.0 (#117)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 23.9% | 22.5% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 77.8% | 84.4% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 15.2% | 10.3% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 4.2% | 0% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 2.4% | — |
| ProofBench | 19% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 55.3% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1449 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 97.7% | — |
Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 48.4 (#76), Qwen3.6 Flash: 42.1 (#100)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 82.3% | 83.3% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 30.7% | 15.9% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 13.7% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 86.9% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 68.6% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1482 | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 34.8 (#89), Qwen3.6 Flash: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| VPCT | 39.8% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1450 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 53.4 (#69), Qwen3.6 Flash: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1425 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1459 | — |
| LMArena French | 1458 | — |
| LMArena German | 1427 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1390 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1403 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1437 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1457 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 75.0 (#78), Qwen3.6 Flash: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 85% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1459 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 45.2 (#46), Qwen3.6 Flash: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1476 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 66.5 (#34), Qwen3.6 Flash: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1439 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1442 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1678 | — |
| WildBench | 85.4% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1465 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 better than Qwen3.6 Flash?
Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.6 Flash costs 14× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Qwen3.6 Flash?
Qwen3.6 Flash is cheaper. It lists at $0.19 per million input tokens and $1.13 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.5 lists at $3 and $15.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3.6 Flash does, with 1M tokens against 200K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Qwen3.6 Flash share?
13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.5 has 73 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Flash has 13.