# Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct vs Sonar

> Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct and Sonar score almost the same on the Noometry Index (37.7 vs 37.8), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/qwen3-coder-480b-a35b-instruct-vs-sonar
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads 24.7 to 20.3.
- Sonar is cheaper at $1 / $1 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct.
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Alibaba (Qwen) | Perplexity |
| Noometry Index | 37.7 | 37.8 |
| Rank | 186 | 184 |
| Context | 262K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $1.50 | $1 |
| Output $/M | $7.50 | $1 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 36.2 (#199)
- Sonar: 35.1 (#217)

| Benchmark | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 55.4% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1275 | — |
| GSO | 4.9% | — |
| WeirdML | 41.2% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 35.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1413 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 461.45 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.44 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 23.7 (#116)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 27.2% | — |

## Reasoning

- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 24.7 (#141)
- Sonar: 20.3 (#221)

| Benchmark | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 49.5% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 46.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1372 | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 37.9% |
| LiveBench | — | 46.9% |

## Math

- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 34.9 (#151)
- Sonar: 31.3 (#197)

| Benchmark | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Math | — | 41.6% |
| LMArena Math | 1364 | — |

## Knowledge

- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 36.4 (#159)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1337 | — |

## Multilingual

- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 47.8 (#143)
- Sonar: —

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

## Instruction Following

- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 71.8 (#142)
- Sonar: 71.5 (#146)

| Benchmark | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 76.2% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1356 | — |

## Long Context

- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 42.0 (#126)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1379 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 55.5 (#142)
- Sonar: 52.6 (#166)

| Benchmark | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1356 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1333 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1365 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 44.1% |

## FAQ

### Is Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct better than Sonar?

Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct and Sonar score almost the same on the Noometry Index (37.7 vs 37.8), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Which is cheaper, Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct or Sonar?

Sonar is cheaper. It lists at $1 per million input tokens and $1 per million output tokens; Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct lists at $1.50 and $7.50.

### Is Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct or Sonar better for coding?

Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.2 versus 35.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct and Sonar share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has 25 scored results on Noometry and Sonar has 7.