Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Qwen3.5 27B

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 41.9 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5 27B costs 7.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 27 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Anthropic

50.3

Rank #50 Confirmed

Qwen3.5 27B Alibaba (Qwen)

41.9

Rank #127 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 27 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher in 8 categories and Qwen3.5 27B in 1 category; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads 46.1 to 27.5.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is NYT Connections (extended): 80.9% for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 47.9% for Qwen3.5 27B.
  • Qwen3.5 27B is cheaper at $0.30 / $2.40 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
  • Claude Sonnet 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
  • Qwen3.5 27B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 27B
ProviderAnthropicAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index50.341.9
Released2026-02-172026-02-23
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M262K
Max output128K66K
Input $ / M tokens$3$0.30
Output $ / M tokens$15$2.40
Results tracked5728

Sponsored placements are available on pages like this one. Advertise on Noometry

Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.3 (#67), Qwen3.5 27B: 38.9 (#168)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena WebDev15221358
WeirdML66.1%39.5%
LMArena Coding15041427
ALE-Bench1,327349.45
SWE-bench Verified75.2%—
DeepSWE29.9%—
FrontierCode24.3%—
SciCode46.8%—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#28), Qwen3.5 27B: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 27B
Vending-Bench 27,204201.98
Terminal-Bench53.4%—
APEX-Agents43%—
OSWorld 2.09.3%—
DeepResearch Bench54.9%—
OSWorld72.1%—
ExploitBench23.6%—
GBAEval48.8%—
GDP.pdf18%—
LMArena Search1221—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.1 (#45), Qwen3.5 27B: 27.5 (#117)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 27B
NYT Connections (extended)80.9%47.9%
Thematic Generalization76.3%45.5%
LMArena Hard Prompts14841414
DTBench89.9%82.4%
LMCA46.5%34%
ARC-AGI-260.4%—
ARC-AGI-186.5%—
CritPt3.1%—
Chess Puzzles13%—
Mystery Game Puzzles16%—
Epoch Capabilities Index152.24—
ForecastBench62—

Math Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 52.9 (#49), Qwen3.5 27B: 38.8 (#127)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena Math14621429
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions—56.7%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202585.8%—
ProofBench45%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)32.4%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)8.3%—

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.7 (#65), Qwen3.5 27B: 38.0 (#150)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 27B
Vectara Hallucination Rate10.6%12.1%
LMArena Expert15001428
GPQA Diamond87.4%—
SimpleQA Verified35.5%—

Multimodal Qwen3.5 27B leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#68), Qwen3.5 27B: 39.4 (#59)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena Vision12831241
Blueprint-Bench 26.7%—
LMArena Document1482—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.4 (#41), Qwen3.5 27B: 50.8 (#115)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena Non-English14401390
LMArena Chinese14911478
LMArena French14651410
LMArena German14281393
LMArena Japanese14201345
LMArena Korean14111358
LMArena Russian14401390
LMArena Spanish14641407

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.4 (#25), Qwen3.5 27B: 73.5 (#119)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena Instruction Following14751393

Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#44), Qwen3.5 27B: 43.1 (#106)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena Longer Query14791413

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.2 (#22), Qwen3.5 27B: 59.3 (#111)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena Text14581409
LMArena Creative Writing14351362
LMArena Multi-Turn14641410
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1810—
EQ-Bench 41207—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than Qwen3.5 27B?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 41.9 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5 27B costs 7.3× 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 Qwen3.5 27B?

Qwen3.5 27B is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.40 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.6 lists at $3 and $15.

Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Qwen3.5 27B 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?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 does, with 1M tokens against 262K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Qwen3.5 27B share?

27 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 27B has 28.

Related comparisons

Go deeper