Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Opus 4.8 vs Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct

Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 43.0 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct costs 11× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 18 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 4.8 Anthropic

60.7

Rank #13 Confirmed

Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct Alibaba (Qwen)

43.0

Rank #102 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher in 8 categories and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where Claude Opus 4.8 leads 78.4 to 38.8.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 88.8% for Claude Opus 4.8 and 66.7% for Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct.
  • Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is cheaper at $0.50 / $2 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.8.
  • Claude Opus 4.8 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
  • Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Opus 4.8Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
ProviderAnthropicAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index60.743.0
Released2026-05-282025-09
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M131K
Max output128K33K
Input $ / M tokens$5$0.50
Output $ / M tokens$25$2
Results tracked6525

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 59.9 (#12), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 42.5 (#98)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Coding14901440
DeepSWE59%—
FrontierCode46.5%—
LMArena WebDev1556—
SciCode53.5%—
GSO47.1%—
WeirdML82.9%—
ALE-Bench1,564—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.8: 47.6 (#11), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: —

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
APEX-Agents48.9%—
OSWorld 2.020.6%—
Remote Labor Index8.3%—
τ²-bench Banking39.7%—
DeepResearch Bench50.2%—
PostTrainBench33.8%—
GBAEval70.9%—
GDP.pdf24%—
LMArena Search1204—
Vending-Bench 25,787—

Reasoning Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 64.7 (#16), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 31.1 (#81)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
Kagi LLM Benchmark88.8%66.7%
LMArena Hard Prompts14821428
ARC-AGI-272.1%—
SimpleBench64.8%—
NYT Connections (extended)91.1%—
ARC-AGI-192.5%—
CritPt20.9%—
Chess Puzzles34%—
EnigmaEval23.5%—
EBR-Bench28.6%—
Mystery Game Puzzles36%—
DTBench94.9%—
LMCA57.5%—
Surface Evolver Bench87.5%—
Bench to the Future 30.14—
Epoch Capabilities Index158.21—
ForecastBench59.9—

Math Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 78.4 (#13), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 38.8 (#126)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Math14871440
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)80%—
FrontierMath Tier 456.1%—
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions91.8%—
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202598.3%—
ProofBench69%—
Omni-MATH—46.7%
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-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 41.8 (#106)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Expert15021417
GPQA Diamond91%—
SimpleQA Verified53%—
MMLU-Pro—78.6%
Vectara Hallucination Rate—9.3%
GPQA (HELM)—63%

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.8: 42.9 (#26), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: —

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Vision1294—
Blueprint-Bench 214.5%—
Furniture Assembly42.5%—
LMArena Document1475—

Multilingual Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 55.2 (#33), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 52.1 (#93)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Non-English14501407
LMArena Chinese15071460
LMArena French14811413
LMArena German14721417
LMArena Japanese14401395
LMArena Korean14321364
LMArena Russian14741404
LMArena Spanish14661435

Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 77.4 (#24), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 70.8 (#159)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Instruction Following14761389
IFEval—81%

Long Context Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 45.4 (#35), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 37.0 (#223)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Longer Query14831403
Fiction.LiveBench—55.6%

Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.8 leads

Claude Opus 4.8: 72.0 (#16), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 58.0 (#121)

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
LMArena Text14611417
LMArena Creative Writing14541334
LMArena Multi-Turn14761416
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1840—
WildBench—80.7%
EQ-Bench 41281—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct?

Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 43.0 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct costs 11× 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-Next 80B-A3B Instruct?

Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is cheaper. It lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $2 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.8 lists at $5 and $25.

Is Claude Opus 4.8 or Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 59.9 versus 42.5 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 4.8 does, with 1M tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.8 and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct share?

18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.8 has 65 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct has 25.

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