Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 5 vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct

Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.6 to 31.9 on the Noometry Index. Qwen2.5 72B Instruct costs 1.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 24 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 5 Anthropic

54.6

Rank #29 Confirmed

Qwen2.5 72B Instruct Alibaba (Qwen)

31.9

Rank #267 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 24 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher in 9 categories and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where Claude Sonnet 5 leads 66.2 to 19.3.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 94.7% for Claude Sonnet 5 and 8.1% for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct.
  • Qwen2.5 72B Instruct is cheaper at $1.40 / $5.60 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.
  • Claude Sonnet 5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
  • Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 5Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
ProviderAnthropicAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index54.631.9
Released2026-06-292024-09
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M131K
Max output128K8K
Input $ / M tokens$2$1.40
Output $ / M tokens$10$5.60
Results tracked5143

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 55.5 (#26), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 33.2 (#260)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
WeirdML68.8%16%
LMArena Coding14831292
DeepSWE53.8%—
FrontierCode42.7%—
CursorBench34.1%—
LMArena WebDev1541—
SciCode54.3%—
GSO37.3%—
BigCodeBench Instruct—45.8%
BigCodeBench Complete—55.9%
ALE-Bench1,463—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 42.8 (#18), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.1 (#133)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
APEX-Agents54.5%—
TheAgentCompany—5.7%
BALROG—16.2%
GBAEval65.3%—
LMArena Search1194—
METR Time Horizons—35.8%
Vending-Bench 26,378—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 49.1 (#39), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.3 (#199)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
LMArena Hard Prompts14611271
DTBench92.5%62.9%
LMCA50%13.4%
Epoch Capabilities Index156.21129
ForecastBench61.157.5
SimpleBench60.6%—
NYT Connections (extended)75.1%—
CritPt16.9%—
Chess Puzzles35%—
Mystery Game Puzzles35%—
Surface Evolver Bench60%—
Bench to the Future 30.14—
BIG-Bench Hard—79.8%
HellaSwag—84.8%
PIQA—82.6%
WinoGrande—82.3%

Math Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 66.2 (#27), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 19.3 (#287)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202594.7%8.1%
LMArena Math14671283
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)65.6%—
FrontierMath Tier 429.3%—
ProofBench77%—
Omni-MATH—33%
MATH Level 5—63.2%

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 55.6 (#47), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 27.0 (#253)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
GPQA Diamond90.5%49.1%
LMArena Expert14901245
SimpleQA Verified33.7%—
MMLU-Pro—63.1%
Confabulations—19.1%
GPQA (HELM)—42.6%
ARC (AI2) Challenge—94.5%
MMLU—85.3%
TriviaQA—71.9%

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 5: 42.4 (#31), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
LMArena Vision1274—
Blueprint-Bench 224.9%—
LMArena Document1466—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 53.8 (#55), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 41.0 (#213)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
LMArena Non-English14311252
LMArena Chinese14771272
LMArena French14601280
LMArena German14401234
LMArena Japanese14221180
LMArena Korean14111188
LMArena Russian14511264
LMArena Spanish14371256

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 76.3 (#41), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 65.5 (#221)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
LMArena Instruction Following14521254
IFEval—80.6%

Long Context Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 44.8 (#55), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 38.9 (#188)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
LMArena Longer Query14631282

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 69.2 (#25), Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 46.7 (#215)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
LMArena Text14421269
LMArena Creative Writing14161221
LMArena Multi-Turn14541272
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1794—
WildBench—80.2%
EQ-Bench 41236—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?

Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.6 to 31.9 on the Noometry Index. Qwen2.5 72B Instruct costs 1.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?

Qwen2.5 72B Instruct is cheaper. It lists at $1.40 per million input tokens and $5.60 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5 lists at $2 and $10.

Is Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.5 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 5 does, with 1M tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct share?

24 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5 has 51 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has 43.

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