# Claude Sonnet 5 vs Qwen Plus

> Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.6 to 37.1 on the Noometry Index. Qwen Plus costs 6.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-qwen-plus
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher in 8 categories and Qwen Plus in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Sonnet 5 leads 66.2 to 23.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 94.7% for Claude Sonnet 5 and 17.8% for Qwen Plus.
- Qwen Plus is cheaper at $0.40 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 54.6 | 37.1 |
| Rank | 29 | 210 |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Input $/M | $2 | $0.40 |
| Output $/M | $10 | $1.20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Claude Sonnet 5: 55.5 (#26)
- Qwen Plus: 38.9 (#167)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1483 | 1328 |
| DeepSWE | 53.8% | — |
| FrontierCode | 42.7% | — |
| CursorBench | 34.1% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1541 | — |
| SciCode | 54.3% | — |
| GSO | 37.3% | — |
| WeirdML | 68.8% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,463 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Sonnet 5: 42.8 (#18)
- Qwen Plus: —

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 54.5% | — |
| GBAEval | 65.3% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1194 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 6,378 | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Sonnet 5: 49.1 (#39)
- Qwen Plus: 28.4 (#107)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1461 | 1317 |
| DTBench | 92.5% | 81.1% |
| LMCA | 50% | 24% |
| SimpleBench | 60.6% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 63.3% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 75.1% | — |
| CritPt | 16.9% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 35% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 35% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 60% | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.14 | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 156.21 | — |
| ForecastBench | 61.1 | — |

## Math

- Claude Sonnet 5: 66.2 (#27)
- Qwen Plus: 23.3 (#271)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 94.7% | 17.8% |
| LMArena Math | 1467 | 1326 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 65.6% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 29.3% | — |
| ProofBench | 77% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 65.3% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 1.7% |

## Knowledge

- Claude Sonnet 5: 55.6 (#47)
- Qwen Plus: 27.4 (#251)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 90.5% | 48.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1490 | 1328 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 33.7% | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude Sonnet 5: 42.4 (#31)
- Qwen Plus: —

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1274 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 24.9% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1466 | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Sonnet 5: 53.8 (#55)
- Qwen Plus: 45.1 (#175)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1431 | 1310 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1477 | 1347 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1422 | 1251 |
| LMArena Russian | 1451 | 1323 |
| LMArena French | 1460 | — |
| LMArena German | 1440 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1437 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Sonnet 5: 76.3 (#41)
- Qwen Plus: 68.8 (#181)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1452 | 1303 |

## Long Context

- Claude Sonnet 5: 44.8 (#55)
- Qwen Plus: 40.3 (#158)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1463 | 1324 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Sonnet 5: 69.2 (#25)
- Qwen Plus: 52.2 (#176)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1442 | 1326 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1416 | 1293 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1454 | 1336 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1794 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1236 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Qwen Plus?

Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.6 to 37.1 on the Noometry Index. Qwen Plus costs 6.7× 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 Qwen Plus?

Qwen Plus is cheaper. It lists at $0.40 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5 lists at $2 and $10.

### Is Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen Plus better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.5 versus 38.9 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 1M tokens.

### How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen Plus share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5 has 51 scored results on Noometry and Qwen Plus has 20.
