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).
| Metric | Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen3 6 (max) |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 63.3 | 63.3 |
| Agents & tools score | 68.8 | 72.0 |
| Coding score | 62.4 | 58.2 |
| Composite score | 69.4 | 64.9 |
| Human preference score | 64.9 | 65.9 |
| Instruction following score | 53.9 | 74.2 |
| Knowledge score | 70.6 | 64.0 |
| Long context score | 65.5 | 66.9 |
| Maths score | 65.7 | 64.2 |
| Multimodal score | 63.6 | – |
| Reasoning score | 62.6 | 63.2 |
| Blended price $/M | $10.00 | $2.96 |
| Output speed | 36 tok/s | 59 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 2.4 s | 38.5 s |
| Context window | 1M | 246k |
| GPQA Diamond | 90.5% | 87.4% |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 94.4% | 91.1% |
| SWE-bench Verified (Epoch) | 78.7% | 76.7% |
| SimpleQA Verified | – | 52.0% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 19.0% | – |
| Terminal-Bench | 79.8% | – |
| SimpleBench | 67.6% | 63.0% |
| Cybench | 93.0% | – |
| Remote Labor Index | 4.2% | – |
| WeirdML | 77.9% | – |
| APEX-Agents | 32.4% | – |
| FrontierCode | 26.6% | – |
| GSO-Bench | 33.3% | – |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 155.3 | 149.3 |
| LMArena Text | 1498 | 1460 |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1527 | 1482 |
| LMArena Coding | 1546 | 1509 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1537 | 1479 |
| LMArena Vision | 1311 | – |
| AA Intelligence Index | 31.9 | 28.4 |
| IFBench | 53.1% | 76.6% |
| AA-LCR | 78.0% | 80.7% |
| MMMU-Pro | 75.4% | – |
| AA-Omniscience | 13.7 | 9.2 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | 48.5% | 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% |
| CorpFin | – | 66.5% |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | – | 72.8% |
| HiL-Bench | 38.3% | – |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1223 | – |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 72.4% | – |
| 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.