Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 5 vs Qwen3 235B-A22B

Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.6 to 43.5 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 235B-A22B costs 3.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 32 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 5 Anthropic

54.6

Rank #29 Confirmed

Qwen3 235B-A22B Alibaba (Qwen)

43.5

Rank #91 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 32 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher in 8 categories and Qwen3 235B-A22B in 1 category; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Sonnet 5 leads 49.1 to 15.7.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is SimpleBench: 60.6% for Claude Sonnet 5 and 31% for Qwen3 235B-A22B.
  • Qwen3 235B-A22B is cheaper at $0.70 / $2.80 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.
  • Claude Sonnet 5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
  • Qwen3 235B-A22B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 5Qwen3 235B-A22B
ProviderAnthropicAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index54.643.5
Released2026-06-292025-04
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M131K
Max output128K16K
Input $ / M tokens$2$0.70
Output $ / M tokens$10$2.80
Results tracked5149

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

Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 55.5 (#26), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 44.3 (#75)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3 235B-A22B
SciCode54.3%42.4%
WeirdML68.8%41%
LMArena Coding14831445
DeepSWE53.8%—
FrontierCode42.7%—
Aider Polyglot—59.6%
CursorBench34.1%—
LMArena WebDev1541—
GSO37.3%—
ALE-Bench1,463—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 42.8 (#18), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 33.9 (#51)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3 235B-A22B
Vending-Bench 26,378-11.34
APEX-Agents54.5%—
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—52.1%
GBAEval65.3%—
LMArena Search1194—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 49.1 (#39), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 15.7 (#311)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3 235B-A22B
SimpleBench60.6%31%
CritPt16.9%0%
Chess Puzzles35%12%
LMArena Hard Prompts14611433
Mystery Game Puzzles35%9%
DTBench92.5%80.3%
LMCA50%29.3%
Epoch Capabilities Index156.21143.85
ForecastBench61.159.7
ARC-AGI-2—1.3%
Kagi LLM Benchmark—69.4%
NYT Connections (extended)75.1%—
ARC-AGI-1—11%
Surface Evolver Bench60%—
Bench to the Future 30.14—

Math Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 66.2 (#27), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 50.4 (#57)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3 235B-A22B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202594.7%86.7%
LMArena Math14671432
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)65.6%—
FrontierMath Tier 429.3%—
ProofBench77%—
Omni-MATH—71.8%
MATH Level 5—68.9%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)—8.5%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)—0%

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 55.6 (#47), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 49.6 (#73)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3 235B-A22B
GPQA Diamond90.5%80.1%
SimpleQA Verified33.7%40.4%
LMArena Expert14901463
MMLU-Pro—84.4%
Confabulations—15.6%
Vectara Hallucination Rate—9.3%
GPQA (HELM)—72.7%

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 5: 42.4 (#31), Qwen3 235B-A22B: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Vision1274—
Blueprint-Bench 224.9%—
LMArena Document1466—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 53.8 (#55), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 52.3 (#89)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Non-English14311409
LMArena Chinese14771481
LMArena French14601445
LMArena German14401433
LMArena Japanese14221399
LMArena Korean14111391
LMArena Russian14511411
LMArena Spanish14371430

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 76.3 (#41), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 72.6 (#136)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Instruction Following14521408
IFEval—83.5%

Long Context Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 44.8 (#55), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 46.1 (#26)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Longer Query14631426
Fiction.LiveBench—75%

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 69.2 (#25), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 59.6 (#108)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Text14421419
LMArena Creative Writing14161384
EQ-Bench Creative Writing17941366
LMArena Multi-Turn14541432
Short-Story Creative Writing—83%
WildBench—86.6%
EQ-Bench 41236—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Qwen3 235B-A22B?

Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.6 to 43.5 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 235B-A22B costs 3.3× 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 Qwen3 235B-A22B?

Qwen3 235B-A22B is cheaper. It lists at $0.70 per million input tokens and $2.80 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5 lists at $2 and $10.

Is Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3 235B-A22B better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.5 versus 44.3 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 Qwen3 235B-A22B share?

32 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5 has 51 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 235B-A22B has 49.

Related comparisons

Go deeper