Model comparison
Claude Opus 4.8 vs Qwen3.6 35B-A3B
Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 37.6 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.6 35B-A3B costs 18× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 13 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher in 5 categories and Qwen3.6 35B-A3B in 0 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Opus 4.8 leads 78.4 to 38.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3): 80% for Claude Opus 4.8 and 20.4% for Qwen3.6 35B-A3B.
- Qwen3.6 35B-A3B is cheaper at $0.25 / $1.49 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.8.
- Claude Opus 4.8 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
- Qwen3.6 35B-A3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Opus 4.8 | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 60.7 | 37.6 |
| Released | 2026-05-28 | 2026-04-01 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 262K |
| Max output | 128K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $5 | $0.25 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $25 | $1.49 |
| Results tracked | 65 | 14 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 59.9 (#12), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 37.2 (#196)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 53.5% | 35.8% |
| WeirdML | 82.9% | 34.5% |
| DeepSWE | 59% | — |
| FrontierCode | 46.5% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1556 | — |
| GSO | 47.1% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1490 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,564 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 47.6 (#11), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 22.1 (#134)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 23% |
| APEX-Agents | 48.9% | — |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 20.6% | — |
| Remote Labor Index | 8.3% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 39.7% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 50.2% | — |
| PostTrainBench | 33.8% | — |
| GBAEval | 70.9% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 24% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1204 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 5,787 | — |
Reasoning Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 64.7 (#16), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 28.0 (#109)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| NYT Connections (extended) | 91.1% | 41.6% |
| CritPt | 20.9% | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 34% | 26% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 36% | 22% |
| DTBench | 94.9% | 73.9% |
| LMCA | 57.5% | 29.7% |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 87.5% | 44.4% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 158.21 | 143.93 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 72.1% | — |
| SimpleBench | 64.8% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 88.8% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 92.5% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 23.5% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 28.6% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1482 | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.14 | — |
| ForecastBench | 59.9 | — |
Math Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 78.4 (#13), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 38.9 (#121)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 80% | 20.4% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 98.3% | 86.7% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 56.1% | — |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | 91.8% | — |
| ProofBench | 69% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1487 | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 47.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 31.3% | — |
Knowledge Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 61.3 (#29), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 51.3 (#68)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 91% | 84.8% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 53% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1502 | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.8: 42.9 (#26), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1294 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 14.5% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 42.5% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1475 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.8: 55.2 (#33), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1450 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1507 | — |
| LMArena French | 1481 | — |
| LMArena German | 1472 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1440 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1432 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1474 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1466 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.8: 77.4 (#24), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1476 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.8: 45.4 (#35), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1483 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.8: 72.0 (#16), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1461 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1454 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1840 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1281 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1476 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than Qwen3.6 35B-A3B?
Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 37.6 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.6 35B-A3B costs 18× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or Qwen3.6 35B-A3B?
Qwen3.6 35B-A3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $1.49 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.8 lists at $5 and $25.
Is Claude Opus 4.8 or Qwen3.6 35B-A3B better for coding?
Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 59.9 versus 37.2 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Opus 4.8 does, with 1M tokens against 262K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.8 and Qwen3.6 35B-A3B share?
13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.8 has 65 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 35B-A3B has 14.