# Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct vs Sonar

> Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.5 to 37.8 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/qwen3-next-80b-a3b-instruct-vs-sonar
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads 30.1 to 20.3.
- Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is cheaper at $0.50 / $2 per million input/output tokens, against $1 / $1 for Sonar.
- Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 128K.
- Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Alibaba (Qwen) | Perplexity |
| Noometry Index | 42.5 | 37.8 |
| Rank | 100 | 184 |
| Context | 131K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.50 | $1 |
| Output $/M | $2 | $1 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 41.9 (#101)
- Sonar: 35.1 (#217)

| Benchmark | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Coding | — | 35.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1441 | — |

## Reasoning

- Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 30.1 (#79)
- Sonar: 20.3 (#221)

| Benchmark | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 66.7% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 46.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1428 | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 37.9% |
| LiveBench | — | 46.9% |

## Math

- Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 36.3 (#118)
- Sonar: 31.3 (#197)

| Benchmark | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Omni-MATH | 46.7% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 41.6% |
| LMArena Math | 1440 | — |

## Knowledge

- Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 41.3 (#102)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 78.6% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 9.3% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 63% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1416 | — |

## Multilingual

- Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 52.3 (#88)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1407 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1461 | — |
| LMArena French | 1415 | — |
| LMArena German | 1416 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1398 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1366 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1403 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1436 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 71.0 (#154)
- Sonar: 71.5 (#146)

| Benchmark | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 76.2% |
| IFEval | 81% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1388 | — |

## Long Context

- Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 37.0 (#218)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | 55.6% | — |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1403 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 58.2 (#116)
- Sonar: 52.6 (#166)

| Benchmark | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1417 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1333 | — |
| WildBench | 80.7% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1415 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 44.1% |

## FAQ

### Is Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct better than Sonar?

Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.5 to 37.8 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct or Sonar?

Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is cheaper. It lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $2 per million output tokens; Sonar lists at $1 and $1.

### Is Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct or Sonar better for coding?

Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.9 versus 35.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct does, with 131K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct and Sonar share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct has 25 scored results on Noometry and Sonar has 7.