Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Qwen3.5 Plus

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 42.9 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5 Plus costs 6.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 13 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Anthropic

50.3

Rank #50 Confirmed

Qwen3.5 Plus Alibaba (Qwen)

42.9

Rank #106 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher in 4 categories and Qwen3.5 Plus in 0 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads 46.1 to 32.8.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is LMCA: 46.5% for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 36.4% for Qwen3.5 Plus.
  • Qwen3.5 Plus is cheaper at $0.40 / $2.40 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.6.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Qwen3.5 Plus specifications
Claude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 Plus
ProviderAnthropicAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index50.342.9
Released2026-02-172026-02-16
WeightsProprietaryProprietary
Context window1M1M
Max output128K66K
Input $ / M tokens$3$0.40
Output $ / M tokens$15$2.40
Results tracked5715

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Category by category

Coding Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.3 (#67), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 Plus
ALE-Bench1,327621.92
SWE-bench Verified75.2%—
DeepSWE29.9%—
FrontierCode24.3%—
LMArena WebDev1522—
SciCode46.8%—
WeirdML66.1%—
LMArena Coding1504—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

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

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 Plus
Vending-Bench 27,2040.54
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 Plus: 32.8 (#74)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 Plus
Chess Puzzles13%22%
Mystery Game Puzzles16%17%
DTBench89.9%80.5%
LMCA46.5%36.4%
Epoch Capabilities Index152.24146.78
ARC-AGI-260.4%—
NYT Connections (extended)80.9%—
ARC-AGI-186.5%—
CritPt3.1%—
Thematic Generalization76.3%—
LMArena Hard Prompts1484—
ForecastBench62—

Math Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 52.9 (#49), Qwen3.5 Plus: 49.6 (#61)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 Plus
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202585.8%86.7%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)32.4%21%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)8.3%2.1%
ProofBench45%—
LMArena Math1462—

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.7 (#65), Qwen3.5 Plus: 46.0 (#83)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 Plus
GPQA Diamond87.4%84.8%
SimpleQA Verified35.5%25.4%
Vectara Hallucination Rate10.6%10.7%
LMArena Expert1500—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#68), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Vision1283—
Blueprint-Bench 26.7%—
LMArena Document1482—

Multilingual Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.4 (#41), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Non-English1440—
LMArena Chinese1491—
LMArena French1465—
LMArena German1428—
LMArena Japanese1420—
LMArena Korean1411—
LMArena Russian1440—
LMArena Spanish1464—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.4 (#25), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Instruction Following1475—

Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#44), Qwen3.5 Plus: 43.0 (#113)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 Plus
CL-bench—19.8%
CL-bench Life—12.4%
LMArena Longer Query1479—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.2 (#22), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Text1458—
LMArena Creative Writing1435—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1810—
EQ-Bench 41207—
LMArena Multi-Turn1464—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than Qwen3.5 Plus?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 42.9 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5 Plus costs 6.7× 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 Plus?

Qwen3.5 Plus is cheaper. It lists at $0.40 per million input tokens and $2.40 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.6 lists at $3 and $15.

Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 1M tokens.

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

13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 Plus has 15.

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