Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Qwen3.5-9B
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 33.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 53× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 9 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 9 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher in 5 categories and Qwen3.5-9B in 0 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in agentic & tool use, where Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads 39.1 to 14.5.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Terminal-Bench: 53.4% for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 9.2% for Qwen3.5-9B.
- Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
- Qwen3.5-9B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.5-9B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 50.3 | 33.8 |
| Released | 2026-02-17 | 2026-02-23 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 262K |
| Max output | 128K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $3 | $0.10 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $15 | $0.15 |
| Results tracked | 57 | 10 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.3 (#67), Qwen3.5-9B: 35.9 (#217)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 46.8% | 27.5% |
| SWE-bench Verified | 75.2% | — |
| DeepSWE | 29.9% | — |
| FrontierCode | 24.3% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1522 | — |
| WeirdML | 66.1% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1504 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,327 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#28), Qwen3.5-9B: 14.5 (#151)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 53.4% | 9.2% |
| APEX-Agents | 43% | — |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 9.3% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 54.9% | — |
| OSWorld | 72.1% | — |
| ExploitBench | 23.6% | — |
| GBAEval | 48.8% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 18% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1221 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 7,204 | — |
Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.1 (#45), Qwen3.5-9B: 23.1 (#182)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 3.1% | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 13% | 12% |
| DTBench | 89.9% | 71.2% |
| LMCA | 46.5% | 24.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 152.24 | 139.46 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 60.4% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 80.9% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 86.5% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | 76.3% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1484 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 16% | — |
| ForecastBench | 62 | — |
Math Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 52.9 (#49), Qwen3.5-9B: 34.8 (#192)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 85.8% | 61.7% |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 48.5% |
| ProofBench | 45% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1462 | — |
| 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), Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#84)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 87.4% | 79% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 35.5% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.6% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1500 | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#68), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1283 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 6.7% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1482 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.4 (#41), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1440 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1491 | — |
| LMArena French | 1465 | — |
| LMArena German | 1428 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1420 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1440 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1464 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.4 (#25), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1475 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#44), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1479 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.2 (#22), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1458 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1435 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1810 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1207 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1464 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than Qwen3.5-9B?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 33.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 53× 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 Qwen3.5-9B?
Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.6 lists at $3 and $15.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Qwen3.5-9B better for coding?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.3 versus 35.9 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 Qwen3.5-9B share?
9 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.