Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Qwen3.6 Flash

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.1 to 38.4 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.6 Flash costs 14× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 11 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Anthropic

50.1

Rank #42 Confirmed

Qwen3.6 Flash Alibaba (Qwen)

38.4

Rank #176 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher in 3 categories and Qwen3.6 Flash in 0 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads 46.1 to 28.4.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is SimpleQA Verified: 35.5% for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 15.9% 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 4.6.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.6 Flash
ProviderAnthropicAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index50.138.4
Released2026-02-172026-04-27
WeightsProprietaryProprietary
Context window1M1M
Max output128K66K
Input $ / M tokens$3$0.19
Output $ / M tokens$15$1.13
Results tracked5713

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

Category by category

Coding Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.0 (#62), Qwen3.6 Flash: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.6 Flash
ALE-Bench1,327326.4
SWE-bench Verified75.2%—
DeepSWE29.9%—
FrontierCode24.3%—
LMArena WebDev1521—
SciCode46.8%—
WeirdML66.1%—
LMArena Coding1504—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#26), Qwen3.6 Flash: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.6 Flash
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 (#40), Qwen3.6 Flash: 28.4 (#90)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.6 Flash
Chess Puzzles13%20%
Mystery Game Puzzles16%18%
DTBench89.9%77.1%
LMCA46.5%31%
Epoch Capabilities Index152.25143.26
ARC-AGI-260.4%—
SimpleBench—35.2%
NYT Connections (extended)80.9%—
ARC-AGI-186.5%—
CritPt3.1%—
Thematic Generalization76.3%—
LMArena Hard Prompts1485—
ForecastBench62—

Math Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.9 (#41), Qwen3.6 Flash: 38.0 (#88)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.6 Flash
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202585.8%84.4%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)32.4%10.3%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)8.3%0%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)—22.5%
ProofBench45%—
LMArena Math1463—

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.6 (#60), Qwen3.6 Flash: 42.2 (#90)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.6 Flash
GPQA Diamond87.4%83.3%
SimpleQA Verified35.5%15.9%
Vectara Hallucination Rate10.6%—
LMArena Expert1500—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#61), Qwen3.6 Flash: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.6 Flash
LMArena Vision1283—
Blueprint-Bench 26.7%—
LMArena Document1482—

Multilingual Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.6 (#39), Qwen3.6 Flash: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.6 Flash
LMArena Non-English1440—
LMArena Chinese1491—
LMArena French1465—
LMArena German1428—
LMArena Japanese1419—
LMArena Korean1411—
LMArena Russian1440—
LMArena Spanish1465—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.6 (#23), Qwen3.6 Flash: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.6 Flash
LMArena Instruction Following1476—

Long Context Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#40), Qwen3.6 Flash: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.6 Flash
LMArena Longer Query1479—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.4 (#22), Qwen3.6 Flash: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3.6 Flash
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 Qwen3.6 Flash?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.1 to 38.4 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.6 Flash costs 14× 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 Qwen3.6 Flash?

Qwen3.6 Flash is cheaper. It lists at $0.19 per million input tokens and $1.13 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.6 lists at $3 and $15.

Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 1M tokens.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Qwen3.6 Flash share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Flash has 13.

Related comparisons

Go deeper