# Claude Opus 5.5 vs Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct

> Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 68.5 to 37.7 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct costs 2.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-qwen3-coder-480b-a35b-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 12

## Summary

- They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher in 9 categories and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Opus 5.5 leads 92.4 to 34.9.
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is cheaper at $1.50 / $7.50 per million input/output tokens, against $4 / $20 for Claude Opus 5.5.
- Claude Opus 5.5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 68.5 | 37.7 |
| Rank | 3 | 186 |
| Context | 1M | 262K |
| Input $/M | $4 | $1.50 |
| Output $/M | $20 | $7.50 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude Opus 5.5: 71.4 (#1)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 36.2 (#199)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1820 | 1275 |
| LMArena Coding | 1545 | 1413 |
| FrontierCode | 54.4% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 55.4% |
| CursorBench | 57.8% | — |
| FrontierSWE | 62.3% | — |
| SciCode | 66.9% | — |
| GSO | — | 4.9% |
| WeirdML | — | 41.2% |
| MirrorCode | 77.4% | — |
| ALE-Bench | — | 461.45 |
| AlgoTune | — | 1.44 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Opus 5.5: 45.3 (#13)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 23.7 (#116)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 27.2% |
| APEX-Agents | 73.5% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 30.6% | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Opus 5.5: 79.5 (#2)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 24.7 (#141)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1545 | 1372 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 92.5% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 49.5% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 88.5% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 97.5% | — |
| CritPt | 31.7% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 71.4% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 71% | — |
| DTBench | 98.9% | — |
| LMCA | 68.2% | — |

## Math

- Claude Opus 5.5: 92.4 (#2)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 34.9 (#151)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 91.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 95% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 100% | — |
| ProofBench | 100% | — |
| LMArena Math | — | 1364 |

## Knowledge

- Claude Opus 5.5: 66.6 (#9)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 36.4 (#159)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1564 | 1337 |
| GPQA Diamond | 90.6% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 72.2% | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude Opus 5.5: 56.5 (#2)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: —

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Furniture Assembly | 83.3% | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Opus 5.5: 59.8 (#1)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 47.8 (#143)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1513 | 1345 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1572 | 1356 |
| LMArena Russian | 1532 | 1367 |
| LMArena French | — | 1394 |
| LMArena German | — | 1324 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1309 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1307 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1360 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Opus 5.5: 80.1 (#2)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 71.8 (#142)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1535 | 1356 |

## Long Context

- Claude Opus 5.5: 47.3 (#18)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 42.0 (#126)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1540 | 1379 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Opus 5.5: 78.7 (#3)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 55.5 (#142)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1518 | 1356 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1538 | 1333 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1520 | 1365 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 2050 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Opus 5.5 better than Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?

Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 68.5 to 37.7 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct costs 2.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 5.5 or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?

Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is cheaper. It lists at $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 5.5 lists at $4 and $20.

### Is Claude Opus 5.5 or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct better for coding?

Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 71.4 versus 36.2 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 5.5 does, with 1M tokens against 262K.

### How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 5.5 and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct share?

12 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 5.5 has 35 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has 25.