Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.1 to 37.7 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct costs 2.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 21 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Anthropic

50.1

Rank #42 Confirmed

Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct Alibaba (Qwen)

37.7

Rank #186 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 21 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher in 9 categories and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads 46.1 to 24.7.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Terminal-Bench: 53.4% for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 27.2% for Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct.
  • Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is cheaper at $1.50 / $7.50 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-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
ProviderAnthropicAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index50.137.7
Released2026-02-172025-04
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M262K
Max output128K66K
Input $ / M tokens$3$1.50
Output $ / M tokens$15$7.50
Results tracked5725

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.0 (#62), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 36.2 (#199)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
LMArena WebDev15211275
WeirdML66.1%41.2%
LMArena Coding15041413
ALE-Bench1,327461.45
SWE-bench Verified75.2%—
DeepSWE29.9%—
FrontierCode24.3%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)—55.4%
SciCode46.8%—
GSO—4.9%
AlgoTune—1.44

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#26), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 23.7 (#116)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
Terminal-Bench53.4%27.2%
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-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 24.7 (#141)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
LMArena Hard Prompts14851372
ARC-AGI-260.4%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark—49.5%
NYT Connections (extended)80.9%—
ARC-AGI-186.5%—
CritPt3.1%—
Chess Puzzles13%—
Thematic Generalization76.3%—
Mystery Game Puzzles16%—
DTBench89.9%—
LMCA46.5%—
Epoch Capabilities Index152.25—
ForecastBench62—

Math Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.9 (#41), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 34.9 (#151)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
LMArena Math14631364
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: 51.6 (#60), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 36.4 (#159)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
LMArena Expert15001337
GPQA Diamond87.4%—
SimpleQA Verified35.5%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate10.6%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#61), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
LMArena Vision1283—
Blueprint-Bench 26.7%—
LMArena Document1482—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.6 (#39), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 47.8 (#143)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
LMArena Non-English14401345
LMArena Chinese14911356
LMArena French14651394
LMArena German14281324
LMArena Japanese14191309
LMArena Korean14111307
LMArena Russian14401367
LMArena Spanish14651360

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.6 (#23), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 71.8 (#142)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
LMArena Instruction Following14761356

Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#40), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 42.0 (#126)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
LMArena Longer Query14791379

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.4 (#22), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 55.5 (#142)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
LMArena Text14581356
LMArena Creative Writing14351333
LMArena Multi-Turn14641365
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1810—
EQ-Bench 41207—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.1 to 37.7 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct costs 2.0× 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-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?

Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is cheaper. It lists at $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.6 lists at $3 and $15.

Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.0 versus 36.2 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-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct share?

21 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has 25.

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