Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 5 vs Qwen3-30B-A3B
Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.5 to 38.5 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-30B-A3B costs 19× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 26 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 26 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 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 leads 66.1 to 36.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is WeirdML: 68.8% for Claude Sonnet 5 and 29.8% 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.
- Claude Sonnet 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 | Qwen3-30B-A3B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 54.5 | 38.5 |
| Released | 2026-06-29 | 2025-04-28 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 41K |
| Max output | 128K | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $2 | $0.12 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $10 | $0.50 |
| Results tracked | 51 | 32 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 55.5 (#20), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.0 (#188)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 53.6% | 33.3% |
| WeirdML | 68.8% | 29.8% |
| LMArena Coding | 1483 | 1416 |
| DeepSWE | 53.8% | — |
| FrontierCode | 42.7% | — |
| CursorBench | 34.1% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1540 | — |
| GSO | 37.3% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,463 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 42.7 (#16), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 29.5 (#75)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 54.5% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 41.4% |
| GBAEval | 65.3% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1194 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 6,378 | — |
Reasoning Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 48.2 (#37), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 21.6 (#193)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 16.9% | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 35% | 8% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1461 | 1398 |
| DTBench | 92.5% | 69.3% |
| LMCA | 50% | 22.4% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 156.34 | 139.63 |
| SimpleBench | 60.6% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 54.9% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 75.1% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 35% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 60% | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.14 | — |
| ForecastBench | 61.1 | — |
Math Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 66.1 (#21), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 36.0 (#133)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 94.7% | 70.3% |
| LMArena Math | 1467 | 1394 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 65.6% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 29.3% | — |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 47.8% |
| ProofBench | 77% | — |
Knowledge Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 55.7 (#42), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 41.7 (#96)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 90.5% | 70.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1491 | 1395 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 33.7% | — |
| Confabulations | — | 12.3% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 5: 42.4 (#26), Qwen3-30B-A3B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1275 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 24.9% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1466 | — |
Multilingual Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 54.0 (#55), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 49.8 (#126)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1431 | 1372 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1475 | 1434 |
| LMArena French | 1457 | 1419 |
| LMArena German | 1448 | 1379 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1422 | 1338 |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | 1333 |
| LMArena Russian | 1452 | 1369 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1436 | 1403 |
Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 76.6 (#39), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 72.2 (#137)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1453 | 1364 |
Long Context Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 44.8 (#53), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 31.0 (#278)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1464 | 1379 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 40.6% |
Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 69.4 (#24), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 55.9 (#138)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1443 | 1384 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1416 | 1318 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1454 | 1378 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 75.3% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1794 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1236 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Qwen3-30B-A3B?
Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.5 to 38.5 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-30B-A3B costs 19× 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 Qwen3-30B-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 lists at $2 and $10.
Is Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3-30B-A3B better for coding?
Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.5 versus 37.0 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Sonnet 5 does, with 1M tokens against 41K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen3-30B-A3B share?
26 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5 has 51 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-30B-A3B has 32.