Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Qwen3-30B-A3B

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 61.9 to 38.9 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-30B-A3B costs 19× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 5.5 Anthropic

61.9

Rank #10 Confirmed

Qwen3-30B-A3B Alibaba (Qwen)

38.9

Rank #179 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores higher in 9 categories and Qwen3-30B-A3B in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads 87.9 to 37.4.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is CritPt: 31.4% for Claude Sonnet 5.5 and 0.3% for Qwen3-30B-A3B.
  • Qwen3-30B-A3B is cheaper at $0.12 / $0.50 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.5.
  • Claude Sonnet 5.5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 41K.
  • Qwen3-30B-A3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 5.5Qwen3-30B-A3B
ProviderAnthropicAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index61.938.9
Released2026-09-282025-04-28
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M41K
Max output128K16K
Input $ / M tokens$2$0.12
Output $ / M tokens$10$0.50
Results tracked3232

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5.5: 67.3 (#6), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.5 (#194)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5.5Qwen3-30B-A3B
SciCode61%33.3%
LMArena Coding15131416
FrontierCode52.1%—
CursorBench55.5%—
LMArena WebDev1774—
FrontierSWE61.9%—
WeirdML—29.8%
ALE-Bench1,819—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5.5: 45.0 (#16), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 29.8 (#82)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5.5Qwen3-30B-A3B
APEX-Agents75.5%—
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—41.4%

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5.5: 54.0 (#28), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 22.2 (#204)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5.5Qwen3-30B-A3B
CritPt31.4%0.3%
LMArena Hard Prompts14951398
Epoch Capabilities Index165.03139.63
Kagi LLM Benchmark—54.9%
NYT Connections (extended)80.5%—
Chess Puzzles—8%
Mystery Game Puzzles65%—
DTBench—69.3%
LMCA—22.4%

Math Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5.5: 87.9 (#6), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.4 (#157)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5.5Qwen3-30B-A3B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025100%70.3%
LMArena Math15101394
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)88.8%—
FrontierMath Tier 480.5%—
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions—47.8%
ProofBench100%—
FrontierMath Erdős2.9%—

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5.5: 66.0 (#12), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 41.8 (#105)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5.5Qwen3-30B-A3B
GPQA Diamond95.6%70.1%
LMArena Expert15401396
SimpleQA Verified46.5%—
Confabulations—12.3%

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 5.5: 51.5 (#6), Qwen3-30B-A3B: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5.5Qwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Vision1289—
Furniture Assembly75%—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5.5: 55.3 (#30), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 49.5 (#132)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5.5Qwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Non-English14521372
LMArena Chinese15221433
LMArena Russian14511370
LMArena French—1418
LMArena German—1380
LMArena Japanese—1337
LMArena Korean—1331
LMArena Spanish—1404

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5.5: 78.3 (#11), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 72.0 (#142)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5.5Qwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Instruction Following14951363

Long Context Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5.5: 45.9 (#28), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 31.0 (#283)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5.5Qwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Longer Query14981379
Fiction.LiveBench—40.6%

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5.5: 66.0 (#40), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 55.6 (#143)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5.5Qwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Text14711384
LMArena Creative Writing14651317
LMArena Multi-Turn14741378
Short-Story Creative Writing—75.3%

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 5.5 better than Qwen3-30B-A3B?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 61.9 to 38.9 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-30B-A3B costs 19× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Qwen3-30B-A3B?

Qwen3-30B-A3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.12 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5.5 lists at $2 and $10.

Is Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Qwen3-30B-A3B better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 67.3 versus 37.5 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 does, with 1M tokens against 41K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Qwen3-30B-A3B share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5.5 has 32 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-30B-A3B has 32.

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