Model comparison
Claude Opus 5.5 vs Qwen3.5 397B-A17B
Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 68.6 to 46.0 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5 397B-A17B costs 5.9× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 26 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 26 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher in 10 categories and Qwen3.5 397B-A17B in 0 categories; 10 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Opus 5.5 leads 80.2 to 34.5.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3): 91.2% for Claude Opus 5.5 and 31.2% for Qwen3.5 397B-A17B.
- Qwen3.5 397B-A17B is cheaper at $0.60 / $3.60 per million input/output tokens, against $4 / $20 for Claude Opus 5.5.
- Claude Opus 5.5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
- Qwen3.5 397B-A17B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 68.6 | 46.0 |
| Released | 2026-09-22 | 2026-02-01 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 262K |
| Max output | 128K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $4 | $0.60 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $20 | $3.60 |
| Results tracked | 44 | 36 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 71.9 (#3), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 42.0 (#114)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1813 | 1400 |
| LMArena Coding | 1547 | 1465 |
| FrontierCode | 54.6% | — |
| CursorBench | 57.8% | — |
| FrontierSWE | 62.3% | — |
| SciCode | 66.9% | — |
| MirrorCode | 77.4% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 2,147 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 45.3 (#15), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 33.3 (#53)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 73.5% | 24.9% |
| τ²-bench Airline | — | 81.5% |
| τ²-bench Banking | — | 9.8% |
| τ²-bench Retail | — | 84.4% |
| τ²-bench Telecom | — | 97.8% |
| GDP.pdf | 30.6% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 9,235 | — |
Reasoning Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 80.2 (#3), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 34.5 (#70)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| NYT Connections (extended) | 88.5% | 58.9% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1535 | 1448 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 71% | 18% |
| DTBench | 98.9% | 87.5% |
| LMCA | 68.2% | 37.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 167.33 | 146.65 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 93.3% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 73.7% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 98.5% | — |
| CritPt | 31.7% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 13% |
| Thematic Generalization | — | 65.1% |
| EBR-Bench | 71.4% | — |
Math Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 91.8 (#3), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 46.1 (#73)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 91.2% | 31.2% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 100% | 88.9% |
| LMArena Math | 1506 | 1454 |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 95% | — |
| ProofBench | 100% | — |
| FrontierMath Erdős | 2.9% | — |
Knowledge Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 66.4 (#10), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 53.3 (#58)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 90.6% | 86.4% |
| LMArena Expert | 1547 | 1462 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 72.2% | — |
Multimodal Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 57.8 (#1), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 40.7 (#44)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1321 | 1263 |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 51.2% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 83.3% | — |
Multilingual Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 59.1 (#2), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 53.7 (#59)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1507 | 1430 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1588 | 1500 |
| LMArena French | 1514 | 1461 |
| LMArena Russian | 1520 | 1429 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1507 | 1441 |
| LMArena German | — | 1447 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1426 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1384 |
Instruction Following Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 80.0 (#3), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 75.0 (#77)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1537 | 1424 |
Long Context Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 47.1 (#19), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 44.1 (#74)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1532 | 1442 |
Writing & Preference Claude Opus 5.5 leads
Claude Opus 5.5: 78.2 (#3), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 62.3 (#79)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1515 | 1438 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1533 | 1401 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 2050 | 1478 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1499 | 1446 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Opus 5.5 better than Qwen3.5 397B-A17B?
Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 68.6 to 46.0 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5 397B-A17B costs 5.9× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 5.5 or Qwen3.5 397B-A17B?
Qwen3.5 397B-A17B is cheaper. It lists at $0.60 per million input tokens and $3.60 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 5.5 lists at $4 and $20.
Is Claude Opus 5.5 or Qwen3.5 397B-A17B better for coding?
Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 71.9 versus 42.0 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Opus 5.5 does, with 1M tokens against 262K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 5.5 and Qwen3.5 397B-A17B share?
26 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 5.5 has 44 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 397B-A17B has 36.