Claude Opus 5.5 vs Qwen3 6
Verdict
- Claude Opus 5.5 (thinking) leads on quality: 70.7 vs 63.1.
- Claude Opus 5.5 (thinking) is stronger in composite, knowledge, long context, multimodal, reasoning.
- Qwen3 6 (max) is stronger in agents & tools, coding, human preference, instruction following, maths.
- Qwen3 6 (max) is 2.7× cheaper ($2.96 vs $8.00 per 1M blended).
- Qwen3 6 (max) streams 1.4× faster (66 vs 48 tokens per second).
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (thinking) | Qwen3 6 (max) |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 70.7 | 63.1 |
| Composite score | 95.0 | 63.8 |
| Knowledge score | 85.0 | 63.7 |
| Long context score | 68.5 | 66.5 |
| Multimodal score | 71.9 | – |
| Reasoning score | 95.0 | 59.0 |
| Agents & tools score | – | 71.9 |
| Coding score | – | 58.1 |
| Human preference score | – | 65.7 |
| Instruction following score | – | 74.4 |
| Maths score | – | 66.0 |
| Blended price $/M | $8.00 | $2.96 |
| Output speed | 48 tok/s | 66 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 4.2 s | 33.4 s |
| Context window | 1M | 246k |
| GPQA Diamond | – | 87.4% |
| OTIS Mock AIME | – | 91.1% |
| SWE-bench Verified (Epoch) | – | 76.7% |
| SimpleQA Verified | – | 52.0% |
| SimpleBench | – | 63.0% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | – | 149.3 |
| LMArena Text | – | 1460 |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | – | 1482 |
| LMArena Coding | – | 1509 |
| LMArena WebDev | – | 1479 |
| AA Intelligence Index | 57.6 | 28.4 |
| IFBench | – | 76.6% |
| AA-LCR | 84.7% | 80.7% |
| MMMU-Pro | 87.7% | – |
| AA-Omniscience | 46.4 | 9.2 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | – | 43.9% |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | – | 88.8% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 61.4% | 30.8% |
| SciCode (AA) | 66.9% | – |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | – | 95.9% |
| CorpFin | – | 66.5% |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | – | 72.8% |
| CritPt | 31.7% | 3.7% |
| GDPval (AA) | 67.3% | – |
| CaseLaw v2 | – | 47.9% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 (Vals) | – | 51.7% |
| LMArena Maths | – | 1475 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | – | 1438 |
| LMArena Instruction Following | – | 1449 |
| LMArena Multi-turn | – | 1469 |
| LMArena Longer Queries | – | 1474 |
| Chess Puzzles | – | 20.0% |
| LMCA | – | 42.5% |
| DTBench | – | 87.2% |
| Vending-Bench 2 | – | 4254.2 |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA) | 59.6% | – |
| AutomationBench | 69.5% | – |
| GDP.pdf | 26.2% | – |
| Harvey LAB | 91.2% | – |
| AA-Omniscience: accuracy | 66.2% | 37.9% |
| AA-Omniscience: non-hallucination | 41.4% | 53.8% |
| AA-Briefcase | 1822 | – |
Data as of 2026-09-22. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
Claude Opus 5.5 vs Qwen3 6: questions
- Is Claude Opus 5.5 better than Qwen3 6?
- Claude Opus 5.5 (thinking) leads on quality: 70.7 vs 63.1. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Claude Opus 5.5 (thinking) is ahead overall as of 2026-09-22, but check the category scores for your use.
- Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 5.5 or Qwen3 6?
- Qwen3 6 is cheaper: $2.96 against $8.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
- Which is faster, Claude Opus 5.5 or Qwen3 6?
- Qwen3 6 streams faster: 66 against 48 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Claude Opus 5.5 accepts more context: 1M against 246k tokens.