Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 5 vs Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.5 to 42.5 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct costs 4.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher in 8 categories and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Sonnet 5 leads 66.1 to 36.3.
- Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is cheaper at $0.50 / $2 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.
- Claude Sonnet 5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
- Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 54.5 | 42.5 |
| Released | 2026-06-29 | 2025-09 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 131K |
| Max output | 128K | 33K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $2 | $0.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $10 | $2 |
| Results tracked | 51 | 25 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 55.5 (#20), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 41.9 (#101)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1483 | 1441 |
| DeepSWE | 53.8% | — |
| FrontierCode | 42.7% | — |
| CursorBench | 34.1% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1540 | — |
| SciCode | 53.6% | — |
| GSO | 37.3% | — |
| WeirdML | 68.8% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,463 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 5: 42.7 (#16), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 54.5% | — |
| GBAEval | 65.3% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1194 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 6,378 | — |
Reasoning Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 48.2 (#37), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 30.1 (#79)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1461 | 1428 |
| SimpleBench | 60.6% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 66.7% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 75.1% | — |
| CritPt | 16.9% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 35% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 35% | — |
| DTBench | 92.5% | — |
| LMCA | 50% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 60% | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.14 | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 156.34 | — |
| ForecastBench | 61.1 | — |
Math Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 66.1 (#21), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 36.3 (#118)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1467 | 1440 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 65.6% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 29.3% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 94.7% | — |
| ProofBench | 77% | — |
| Omni-MATH | — | 46.7% |
Knowledge Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 55.7 (#42), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 41.3 (#102)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1491 | 1416 |
| GPQA Diamond | 90.5% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 33.7% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 78.6% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 9.3% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 63% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 5: 42.4 (#26), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1275 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 24.9% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1466 | — |
Multilingual Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 54.0 (#55), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 52.3 (#88)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1431 | 1407 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1475 | 1461 |
| LMArena French | 1457 | 1415 |
| LMArena German | 1448 | 1416 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1422 | 1398 |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | 1366 |
| LMArena Russian | 1452 | 1403 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1436 | 1436 |
Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 76.6 (#39), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 71.0 (#154)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1453 | 1388 |
| IFEval | — | 81% |
Long Context Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 44.8 (#53), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 37.0 (#218)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1464 | 1403 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 55.6% |
Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 69.4 (#24), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 58.2 (#116)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1443 | 1417 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1416 | 1333 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1454 | 1415 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1794 | — |
| WildBench | — | 80.7% |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1236 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct?
Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.5 to 42.5 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct costs 4.6× 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 Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct?
Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is cheaper. It lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $2 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5 lists at $2 and $10.
Is Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct better for coding?
Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.5 versus 41.9 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-Next 80B-A3B Instruct share?
17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5 has 51 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct has 25.