BenchLeader

Claude Opus 4.6 vs Qwen3 6

Verdict
  • Claude Opus 4.6 and Qwen3 6 (max) are level on quality (63.3 vs 63.3).
  • Claude Opus 4.6 is stronger in coding, composite, knowledge, maths, multimodal.
  • Qwen3 6 (max) is stronger in agents & tools, human preference, instruction following, long context, reasoning.
  • Qwen3 6 (max) is 3.4× cheaper ($2.96 vs $10.00 per 1M blended).
  • Qwen3 6 (max) streams 1.6× faster (59 vs 36 tokens per second).
MetricClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3 6 (max)
BenchLeader Index63.363.3
Agents & tools score68.872.0
Coding score62.458.2
Composite score69.464.9
Human preference score64.965.9
Instruction following score53.974.2
Knowledge score70.664.0
Long context score65.566.9
Maths score65.764.2
Multimodal score63.6
Reasoning score62.663.2
Blended price $/M$10.00$2.96
Output speed36 tok/s59 tok/s
Time to first answer2.4 s38.5 s
Context window1M246k
GPQA Diamond90.5%87.4%
OTIS Mock AIME94.4%91.1%
SWE-bench Verified (Epoch)78.7%76.7%
SimpleQA Verified52.0%
Humanity's Last Exam19.0%
Terminal-Bench79.8%
SimpleBench67.6%63.0%
Cybench93.0%
Remote Labor Index4.2%
WeirdML77.9%
APEX-Agents32.4%
FrontierCode26.6%
GSO-Bench33.3%
Epoch Capabilities Index155.3149.3
LMArena Text14981460
LMArena Hard Prompts15271482
LMArena Coding15461509
LMArena WebDev15371479
LMArena Vision1311
AA Intelligence Index31.928.4
IFBench53.1%76.6%
AA-LCR78.0%80.7%
MMMU-Pro75.4%
AA-Omniscience13.79.2
Terminal-Bench Hard48.5%43.9%
GPQA Diamond (AA)89.6%88.8%
Humanity's Last Exam (AA)39.9%30.8%
τ²-Bench Telecom (AA)92.1%95.9%
CorpFin66.5%
SWE-bench (Vals)72.8%
HiL-Bench38.3%
EQ-Bench 41223
Kagi LLM Benchmark72.4%
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)75.6%
SWE-bench Verified (any scaffold)75.6%

Data as of 2026-09-10. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.

Claude Opus 4.6 vs Qwen3 6: questions

Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Qwen3 6?
Claude Opus 4.6 and Qwen3 6 (max) are level on quality (63.3 vs 63.3). The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Qwen3 6 (max) is ahead overall as of 2026-09-10, but check the category scores for your use.
Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Qwen3 6 for coding?
Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher in coding (62 vs 58 on the category index, where 50 is average).
Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Qwen3 6 for agentic tasks?
Qwen3 6 scores higher in agentic tasks (72 vs 69 on the category index, where 50 is average).
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.6 or Qwen3 6?
Qwen3 6 is cheaper: $2.96 against $10.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
Which is faster, Claude Opus 4.6 or Qwen3 6?
Qwen3 6 streams faster: 59 against 36 output tokens per second.
Which has the larger context window?
Claude Opus 4.6 accepts more context: 1M against 246k tokens.