# Claude Sonnet 5 vs Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct

> Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.5 to 37.7 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-qwen3-coder-480b-a35b-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 21

## Summary

- They share 21 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 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 Sonnet 5 leads 66.1 to 34.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GSO: 37.3% for Claude Sonnet 5 and 4.9% for Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct.
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is cheaper at $1.50 / $7.50 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.
- Claude Sonnet 5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 54.5 | 37.7 |
| Rank | 26 | 186 |
| Context | 1M | 262K |
| Input $/M | $2 | $1.50 |
| Output $/M | $10 | $7.50 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude Sonnet 5: 55.5 (#20)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 36.2 (#199)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1540 | 1275 |
| GSO | 37.3% | 4.9% |
| WeirdML | 68.8% | 41.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1483 | 1413 |
| ALE-Bench | 1,463 | 461.45 |
| DeepSWE | 53.8% | — |
| FrontierCode | 42.7% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 55.4% |
| CursorBench | 34.1% | — |
| SciCode | 53.6% | — |
| AlgoTune | — | 1.44 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Sonnet 5: 42.7 (#16)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 23.7 (#116)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 27.2% |
| APEX-Agents | 54.5% | — |
| GBAEval | 65.3% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1194 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 6,378 | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Sonnet 5: 48.2 (#37)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 24.7 (#141)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1461 | 1372 |
| SimpleBench | 60.6% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 49.5% |
| 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: 66.1 (#21)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 34.9 (#151)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1467 | 1364 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 65.6% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 29.3% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 94.7% | — |
| ProofBench | 77% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude Sonnet 5: 55.7 (#42)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 36.4 (#159)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1491 | 1337 |
| GPQA Diamond | 90.5% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 33.7% | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude Sonnet 5: 42.4 (#26)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: —

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1275 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 24.9% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1466 | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Sonnet 5: 54.0 (#55)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 47.8 (#143)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1431 | 1345 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1475 | 1356 |
| LMArena French | 1457 | 1394 |
| LMArena German | 1448 | 1324 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1422 | 1309 |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | 1307 |
| LMArena Russian | 1452 | 1367 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1436 | 1360 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Sonnet 5: 76.6 (#39)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 71.8 (#142)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1453 | 1356 |

## Long Context

- Claude Sonnet 5: 44.8 (#53)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 42.0 (#126)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1464 | 1379 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Sonnet 5: 69.4 (#24)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 55.5 (#142)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1443 | 1356 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1416 | 1333 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1454 | 1365 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1794 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1236 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?

Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.5 to 37.7 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 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 Sonnet 5 lists at $2 and $10.

### Is Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.5 versus 36.2 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 5 does, with 1M tokens against 262K.

### How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct share?

21 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5 has 51 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has 25.