# Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Qwen3 32B

> Claude Sonnet 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 61.9 to 39.2 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 32B costs 3.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-vs-qwen3-32b
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores higher in 9 categories and Qwen3 32B in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads 87.9 to 39.7.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 100% for Claude Sonnet 5.5 and 66.9% for Qwen3 32B.
- Qwen3 32B is cheaper at $0.70 / $2.80 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.5.
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
- Qwen3 32B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 61.9 | 39.2 |
| Rank | 10 | 172 |
| Context | 1M | 131K |
| Input $/M | $2 | $0.70 |
| Output $/M | $10 | $2.80 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 67.3 (#6)
- Qwen3 32B: 37.7 (#190)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 61% | 35.4% |
| LMArena Coding | 1513 | 1358 |
| FrontierCode | 52.1% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 40% |
| CursorBench | 55.5% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1774 | — |
| FrontierSWE | 61.9% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,819 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 45.0 (#16)
- Qwen3 32B: 32.6 (#62)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 75.5% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 48.7% |

## Reasoning

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 54.0 (#28)
- Qwen3 32B: 20.2 (#241)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 31.4% | 0.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1495 | 1334 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 165.03 | 138.51 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 54.9% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 80.5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 5% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 65% | — |
| DTBench | — | 67.5% |
| LMCA | — | 17.3% |

## Math

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 87.9 (#6)
- Qwen3 32B: 39.7 (#99)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 100% | 66.9% |
| LMArena Math | 1510 | 1399 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 88.8% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 80.5% | — |
| ProofBench | 100% | — |
| FrontierMath Erdős | 2.9% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 66.0 (#12)
- Qwen3 32B: 40.0 (#125)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 95.6% | 65.7% |
| LMArena Expert | 1540 | 1362 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 46.5% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 5.9% |

## Multimodal

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 51.5 (#6)
- Qwen3 32B: —

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1289 | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 75% | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 55.3 (#30)
- Qwen3 32B: 45.6 (#167)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1452 | 1317 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1522 | 1357 |
| LMArena Russian | 1451 | 1311 |
| LMArena German | — | 1341 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 78.3 (#11)
- Qwen3 32B: 68.9 (#179)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1495 | 1305 |

## Long Context

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 45.9 (#28)
- Qwen3 32B: 43.8 (#87)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1498 | 1327 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 74.2% |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 66.0 (#40)
- Qwen3 32B: 52.9 (#163)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1471 | 1340 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1465 | 1297 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1474 | 1331 |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Sonnet 5.5 better than Qwen3 32B?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 61.9 to 39.2 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 32B costs 3.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Qwen3 32B?

Qwen3 32B is cheaper. It lists at $0.70 per million input tokens and $2.80 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5.5 lists at $2 and $10.

### Is Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Qwen3 32B better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 67.3 versus 37.7 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 does, with 1M tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Qwen3 32B share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5.5 has 32 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 32B has 26.