Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Qwen Plus

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 37.1 on the Noometry Index. Qwen Plus costs 10.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 18 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Anthropic

50.3

Rank #50 Confirmed

Qwen Plus Alibaba (Qwen)

37.1

Rank #210 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher in 8 categories and Qwen Plus in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads 52.9 to 23.3.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 85.8% for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 17.8% for Qwen Plus.
  • Qwen Plus is cheaper at $0.40 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.6.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4.6Qwen Plus
ProviderAnthropicAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index50.337.1
Released2026-02-172024-01-25
WeightsProprietaryProprietary
Context window1M1M
Max output128K33K
Input $ / M tokens$3$0.40
Output $ / M tokens$15$1.20
Results tracked5720

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.3 (#67), Qwen Plus: 38.9 (#167)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen Plus
LMArena Coding15041328
SWE-bench Verified75.2%—
DeepSWE29.9%—
FrontierCode24.3%—
LMArena WebDev1522—
SciCode46.8%—
WeirdML66.1%—
ALE-Bench1,327—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#28), Qwen Plus: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen Plus
Terminal-Bench53.4%—
APEX-Agents43%—
OSWorld 2.09.3%—
DeepResearch Bench54.9%—
OSWorld72.1%—
ExploitBench23.6%—
GBAEval48.8%—
GDP.pdf18%—
LMArena Search1221—
Vending-Bench 27,204—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.1 (#45), Qwen Plus: 28.4 (#107)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen Plus
LMArena Hard Prompts14841317
DTBench89.9%81.1%
LMCA46.5%24%
ARC-AGI-260.4%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark—63.3%
NYT Connections (extended)80.9%—
ARC-AGI-186.5%—
CritPt3.1%—
Chess Puzzles13%—
Thematic Generalization76.3%—
Mystery Game Puzzles16%—
Epoch Capabilities Index152.24—
ForecastBench62—

Math Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 52.9 (#49), Qwen Plus: 23.3 (#271)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen Plus
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202585.8%17.8%
LMArena Math14621326
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)32.4%1.7%
ProofBench45%—
MATH Level 5—65.3%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)8.3%—

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.7 (#65), Qwen Plus: 27.4 (#251)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen Plus
GPQA Diamond87.4%48.1%
LMArena Expert15001328
SimpleQA Verified35.5%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate10.6%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#68), Qwen Plus: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen Plus
LMArena Vision1283—
Blueprint-Bench 26.7%—
LMArena Document1482—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.4 (#41), Qwen Plus: 45.1 (#175)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen Plus
LMArena Non-English14401310
LMArena Chinese14911347
LMArena Japanese14201251
LMArena Russian14401323
LMArena French1465—
LMArena German1428—
LMArena Korean1411—
LMArena Spanish1464—

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.4 (#25), Qwen Plus: 68.8 (#181)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen Plus
LMArena Instruction Following14751303

Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#44), Qwen Plus: 40.3 (#158)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen Plus
LMArena Longer Query14791324

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.2 (#22), Qwen Plus: 52.2 (#176)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen Plus
LMArena Text14581326
LMArena Creative Writing14351293
LMArena Multi-Turn14641336
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1810—
EQ-Bench 41207—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than Qwen Plus?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 37.1 on the Noometry Index. Qwen Plus costs 10.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Qwen Plus?

Qwen Plus is cheaper. It lists at $0.40 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.6 lists at $3 and $15.

Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Qwen Plus better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.3 versus 38.9 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 1M tokens.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Qwen Plus share?

18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Qwen Plus has 20.

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