Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Opus 4.6 vs Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 38.1 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct costs 3.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 25 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 4.6 Anthropic

58.2

Rank #20 Confirmed

Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct Alibaba (Qwen)

38.1

Rank #190 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 25 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.6 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 reasoning, where Claude Opus 4.6 leads 57.8 to 25.5.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Terminal-Bench: 79.8% for Claude Opus 4.6 and 27.2% for Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct.
  • Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is cheaper at $1.50 / $7.50 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.6.
  • Claude Opus 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
  • Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
ProviderAnthropicAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index58.238.1
Released2026-02-042025-04
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M262K
Max output128K66K
Input $ / M tokens$5$1.50
Output $ / M tokens$25$7.50
Results tracked6825

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.2 (#20), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 35.5 (#223)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)75.6%55.4%
LMArena WebDev15471275
GSO41.2%4.9%
WeirdML78%41.2%
LMArena Coding15361412
ALE-Bench996.5461.45
AlgoTune1.471.44
SWE-bench Verified78.7%—
FrontierCode26.6%—
SWE-bench Multilingual72%—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 51.1 (#4), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 23.9 (#123)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
Terminal-Bench79.8%27.2%
APEX-Agents46.3%—
Remote Labor Index4.2%—
τ²-bench Banking27.3%—
Cybench93%—
DeepResearch Bench55.3%—
GBAEval44.1%—
LMArena Search1253—
METR Time Horizons78.9%—
Vending-Bench 28,018—

Reasoning Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.8 (#23), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 25.5 (#149)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
Kagi LLM Benchmark83.6%49.5%
LMArena Hard Prompts15271372
ARC-AGI-269.2%—
SimpleBench67.6%—
NYT Connections (extended)92.1%—
ARC-AGI-194%—
Chess Puzzles17%—
EnigmaEval7.6%—
Thematic Generalization80.6%—
EBR-Bench12.7%—
Mystery Game Puzzles25%—
DTBench91.2%—
LMCA55.8%—
Epoch Capabilities Index155.24—
ForecastBench60—

Math Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 63.0 (#31), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 37.6 (#150)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
LMArena Math15191365
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)66%—
FrontierMath Tier 426.8%—
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions78.5%—
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202594.4%—
ProofBench50%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)40.7%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)22.9%—

Knowledge Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 61.9 (#26), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 37.0 (#162)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
LMArena Expert15461338
GPQA Diamond90.5%—
Humanity's Last Exam34.4%—
SimpleQA Verified47%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate12.2%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.6: 37.3 (#74), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: —

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
LMArena Vision1316—
Furniture Assembly28.3%—
LMArena Document1507—

Multilingual Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.9 (#6), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 47.7 (#148)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
LMArena Non-English14891346
LMArena Chinese15511357
LMArena French15131398
LMArena German15021325
LMArena Japanese14841310
LMArena Korean14641305
LMArena Russian14971366
LMArena Spanish15101360

Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 79.5 (#4), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 71.6 (#147)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
LMArena Instruction Following15231355

Long Context Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 48.1 (#13), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 42.0 (#131)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
LMArena Longer Query15201378
CL-bench20.7%—
CL-bench Life17%—

Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 73.5 (#10), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 55.3 (#147)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
LMArena Text15031357
LMArena Creative Writing15051333
LMArena Multi-Turn15131365
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1809—
EQ-Bench 41223—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 38.1 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct costs 3.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.6 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 Opus 4.6 lists at $5 and $25.

Is Claude Opus 4.6 or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 57.2 versus 35.5 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 4.6 does, with 1M tokens against 262K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.6 and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct share?

25 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.6 has 68 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has 25.

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