Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Qwen3 8B

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 33.7 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 8B costs 19× 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.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Anthropic

50.3

Rank #50 Confirmed

Qwen3 8B Alibaba (Qwen)

33.7

Rank #238 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 9 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher in 6 categories and Qwen3 8B in 0 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads 46.1 to 16.6.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is LMCA: 46.5% for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 8.8% for Qwen3 8B.
  • Qwen3 8B is cheaper at $0.18 / $0.70 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
  • Claude Sonnet 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
  • Qwen3 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3 8B
ProviderAnthropicAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index50.333.7
Released2026-02-172025-04
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M131K
Max output128K8K
Input $ / M tokens$3$0.18
Output $ / M tokens$15$0.70
Results tracked5711

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.3 (#67), Qwen3 8B: 34.0 (#248)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3 8B
SciCode46.8%22.6%
SWE-bench Verified75.2%—
DeepSWE29.9%—
FrontierCode24.3%—
LMArena WebDev1522—
WeirdML66.1%—
LMArena Coding1504—
ALE-Bench1,327—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#28), Qwen3 8B: 30.2 (#78)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3 8B
Terminal-Bench53.4%—
APEX-Agents43%—
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—42.6%
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), Qwen3 8B: 16.6 (#303)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3 8B
CritPt3.1%0%
Chess Puzzles13%5%
DTBench89.9%59.7%
LMCA46.5%8.8%
Epoch Capabilities Index152.24136.17
ARC-AGI-260.4%—
NYT Connections (extended)80.9%—
ARC-AGI-186.5%—
Thematic Generalization76.3%—
LMArena Hard Prompts1484—
Mystery Game Puzzles16%—
ForecastBench62—

Math Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 52.9 (#49), Qwen3 8B: 34.9 (#191)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3 8B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202585.8%56.1%
ProofBench45%—
LMArena Math1462—
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 8B: 36.1 (#173)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3 8B
GPQA Diamond87.4%56.8%
Vectara Hallucination Rate10.6%4.8%
SimpleQA Verified35.5%—
LMArena Expert1500—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#68), Qwen3 8B: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3 8B
LMArena Vision1283—
Blueprint-Bench 26.7%—
LMArena Document1482—

Multilingual Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.4 (#41), Qwen3 8B: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3 8B
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 8B: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3 8B
LMArena Instruction Following1475—

Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#44), Qwen3 8B: 37.9 (#210)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3 8B
Fiction.LiveBench—62.1%
LMArena Longer Query1479—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.2 (#22), Qwen3 8B: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3 8B
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 8B?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 33.7 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 8B costs 19× 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 8B?

Qwen3 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.18 per million input tokens and $0.70 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.6 lists at $3 and $15.

Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Qwen3 8B better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.3 versus 34.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 does, with 1M tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Qwen3 8B share?

9 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 8B has 11.

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