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Claude Opus 5.5 vs Qwen3.6 Plus

Full profiles: Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic) and Qwen3.6 Plus (Alibaba): every benchmark, price and rank.

Updated · Data from 10 sources

As of 29 Oct 2026, Claude Opus 5.5 is ahead of Qwen3.6 Plus on quality (69.2 vs 59.1 on the BenchLeader Index), but Qwen3.6 Plus is 7.1× cheaper at $1.13 vs $8.00 per 1M tokens blended. Claude Opus 5.5 leads in every category we measure both in. Claude Opus 5.5 streams ~1.5× faster.

Key facts (as of 29 Oct 2026)

  • Claude Opus 5.5 scores 69.2 on the BenchLeader Index and Qwen3.6 Plus scores 59.1 (BenchLeader, 29 Oct 2026).
  • Claude Opus 5.5 costs $8.00 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 29 Oct 2026).
  • Qwen3.6 Plus costs $1.13 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 29 Oct 2026).
  • Claude Opus 5.5 streams ~1.5× faster than Qwen3.6 Plus (Artificial Analysis, 7-day median, 29 Oct 2026).
  • Of the 22 benchmarks both models have, Claude Opus 5.5 leads 22 (BenchLeader, 29 Oct 2026).
  • On Arena WebDev, Claude Opus 5.5 is rated 1809 and Qwen3.6 Plus 1462 (LMArena, as published by 29 Oct 2026).
Claude Opus 5.5 benchmarks max Anthropic Qwen3.6 Plus benchmarks AlibabaOpen in the comparison tool

Which to pick for…

The pick's numbers come first. Category scores on the BenchLeader scale (50 is the average model, 15 points one standard deviation). High confidence means a lead of half a standard deviation or more; under one point is called either.

Use casePickWhyConfidence
CodingClaude Opus 5.580 vs 51 category score; Arena WebDev 1809 vs 1462High
Agents & tool useClaude Opus 5.563 vs 53 category score; LiveBench Agentic Coding 71.7% vs 41.4%High
MathsClaude Opus 5.574 vs 58 category score; FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 91.2% vs 38.3%High
ReasoningClaude Opus 5.573 vs 63 category score; GPQA Diamond 90.6% vs 88.4%High
KnowledgeClaude Opus 5.574 vs 57 category score; SimpleQA Verified 72.2% vs 44.1%High
Long documentsClaude Opus 5.567 vs 64 category score; AA-LCR v1.1 84.7% vs 78.3%Medium
Images and other mediaClaude Opus 5.571 vs 61 category score; MMMU-Pro 87.7% vs 78.0%High
Chat quality (human preference)–Only Qwen3.6 Plus has an Arena rating (63 category score)Not comparable
Lowest costQwen3.6 Plus$1.13 vs $8.00 per 1M blended; agentic coding session $0.042 vs $0.320–
Fastest first answerQwen3.6 Plus101.3 s (Qwen3.6 Plus) vs 648.2 s (Claude Opus 5.5 (max)) to the first answer token–
High volume on a budgetNeither flagshipA smaller model is usually the better fit: Cheapest good LLMs, Fastest LLMs–

Key differences

  • Claude Opus 5.5 (max) leads on quality: 69.2 vs 59.1.
  • Claude Opus 5.5 (max) is stronger in agents & tools, coding, knowledge, long context, maths, multimodal, reasoning.
  • Qwen3.6 Plus is stronger in human preference, instruction following.
  • Qwen3.6 Plus is 7.1× cheaper ($1.13 vs $8.00 per 1M blended).
  • Claude Opus 5.5 (max) streams 1.7× faster (98 vs 56 tokens per second).

At a glance

SpecClaude Opus 5.5Qwen3.6 Plus
DeveloperAnthropicAlibaba
Released22 Sept 202631 Mar 2026
Context window (tokens)1,000,0001,000,000
Max output (tokens)128,000 (up to 300K on the Message Batches API (beta))–
Input typestext, image–
Reasoning effort settingslow, medium, high, xhigh, max–
Compared atClaude Opus 5.5 (max)Qwen3.6 Plus
Open weightsNoNo
Price in / out / cached input per 1M$4.00 / $20.00 / $0.200$0.500 / $3.00 / $0.028
API model IDclaude-opus-5-5–
Where to use itClaude API, Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud, Microsoft Foundry–

Limits, availability and announced prices from the vendors' own pages: docs.anthropic.com (checked 20 Oct 2026). Everything else is from the day's data.

Category by category

Category scores on the BenchLeader scale: 50 is the average evaluated model, 15 points is one standard deviation. A gap under one point is called level.

CategoryClaude Opus 5.5 (max)Qwen3.6 PlusLeader
Reasoning72.963.3Claude Opus 5.5
Coding80.451.1Claude Opus 5.5
Agents & tools63.153.1Claude Opus 5.5
Maths74.057.9Claude Opus 5.5
Knowledge74.157.0Claude Opus 5.5
Instruction following–73.3not comparable
Human preference–62.6not comparable
Multimodal70.660.6Claude Opus 5.5
Long context67.364.0Claude Opus 5.5

Where sources disagree

Across the 22 benchmarks both have, Claude Opus 5.5 leads 22, Qwen3.6 Plus leads 0. Every overall index that rates both puts Claude Opus 5.5 ahead.

Overall indexClaude Opus 5.5 (max)Qwen3.6 PlusLeader
BenchLeader Index69.259.1Claude Opus 5.5
Arena Text1509†1443Claude Opus 5.5

Each publisher runs its own tasks, harnesses and effort settings, so their overall verdicts can differ; BenchLeader reconciles them on one scale. † measured at another effort setting of the same model (the publisher did not test the one compared here).

Price, speed and latency

List prices blended at three input tokens per output token. Per-task prices use the token counts on the methodology page; suite cost is what Artificial Analysis paid to run its whole Intelligence Index.

MeasureClaude Opus 5.5 (max)Qwen3.6 Plus
Blended price per 1M tokens$8.00$1.13
Input / output per 1M$4.00 / $20.00$0.500 / $3.00
Cached input per 1M$0.200$0.028
Price per task: chat reply$0.0076$0.0011
Price per task: summarize a 30-page report$0.060$0.0078
Price per task: code edit$0.054$0.0075
Price per task: agentic coding session$0.320$0.042
Price per task: structured extraction$0.012$0.0016
Cost to run a full benchmark suite$10.04–
Output speed98 tok/s56 tok/s
Time to first answer648.2 s101.3 s
Time to a complete answer653.3 s110.2 s

Each model is compared at its best-ranked reasoning-effort setting. Claude Opus 5.5 (max) scores 69.2 and takes 648 s to its first answer token; Claude Opus 5.5 (xhigh) scores 66.0 in 107 s, Claude Opus 5.5 (high) scores 65.6 in 34 s. Qwen3.6 Plus scores 59.1 and takes 101 s to its first answer token. Higher effort means more thinking before the answer: better scores, longer waits and more tokens billed. How reasoning effort changes scores and cost.

Every benchmark

149 benchmarks, grouped by category; each name links to the board and its leaders. † measured at another effort setting of the same model, shown for reference and not counted as a win.

MetricPublisherClaude Opus 5.5 (max)Qwen3.6 Plus
BenchLeader IndexBenchLeader69.259.1
Agents & tools scoreBenchLeader63.153.1
Coding scoreBenchLeader80.451.1
Knowledge scoreBenchLeader74.157.0
Long context scoreBenchLeader67.364.0
Maths scoreBenchLeader74.057.9
Multimodal scoreBenchLeader70.660.6
Reasoning scoreBenchLeader72.963.3
Human preference scoreBenchLeader–62.6
Instruction following scoreBenchLeader–73.3
Blended price $/MBenchLeader$8.00$1.13
Output speedBenchLeader98 tok/s56 tok/s
Time to first answerBenchLeader648.2 s101.3 s
Context windowBenchLeader1,000,000 tokens1,000,000 tokens
Reasoning
GPQA DiamondEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub90.6%88.4%
Arena Hard PromptsArena (LMArena)1535†1468
LiveBench 2.0 ReasoningLiveBench92.2%†–
LiveBench 1.0 ReasoningLiveBench92.2%75.8%
GPQA Diamond (AA)Artificial Analysis–88.2%
Humanity's Last Exam (AA)Artificial Analysis61.4%27.9%
HLE-Diamond (AA)Artificial Analysis67.9%–
GPQA Diamond (Vals)Vals AI–87.4%
ARC-AGI-1ARC Prize97.5%–
ARC-AGI-2ARC Prize91.7%–
CritPtArtificial Analysis31.7%2.9%
CritPt v2 hard subset (AA)Artificial Analysis61.0%–
MysteryMechanismVals AI49.5%†–
Chess PuzzlesEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub67.0%14.0%
Mystery Game PuzzlesEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub71.0%12.0%†
CL-benchEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub–20.3%
LMCAEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub68.2%33.1%
DTBenchEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub98.9%81.9%
Coding
SWE-bench Verified (Epoch)Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub–57.9%
SciCodeSciCode66.9%40.7%
FrontierCodeCognition54.6%†–
Arena CodingArena (LMArena)1548†1496
Arena WebDevArena (LMArena)18091462
LiveBench 2.0 CodingLiveBench96.3%†–
LiveBench 1.0 CodingLiveBench89.3%78.2%
Show all 149 benchmarks
MetricPublisherClaude Opus 5.5 (max)Qwen3.6 Plus
Coding
SciCode (AA)Artificial Analysis66.9%–
LiveCodeBenchVals AI–86.0%
IOIVals AI95.1%†–
SWE-bench (Vals)Vals AI–73.4%
Code MigrationVals AI66.7%†11.1%
Code Migration v1.1Vals AI81.0%†–
ProgramBenchVals AI18.5%†0.0%
SWE-bench MultimodalVals AI70.2%†–
Vibe Code Bench 1-100Vals AI30.4%†–
Vibe Code Bench v1.1Vals AI90.3%†25.6%
MirrorCodeEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub77.4%–
CursorBenchCursor57.8%–
ALE-BenchEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub2147.4†670.1
FrontierSWEEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub62.3%–
Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA)Artificial Analysis59.6%–
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (AA)Artificial Analysis–61.4%
Startrise FrontendStartrise71.1%†–
FrontierCode 1.1 (AA)Artificial Analysis52.2%–
FrontierCode 2.0 (AA)Artificial Analysis46.4%–
Agents & tools
Terminal-BenchTerminal-Bench64.8%–
Remote Labor IndexScale AI / CAIS21.3%†–
APEX-AgentsMercor73.5%–
Arena AgentArena (LMArena)20.8–
LiveBench Long AgenticLiveBench72.8%†–
LiveBench BrowserLiveBench88.4%†–
LiveBench Agentic CodingLiveBench71.7%41.4%
Terminal-Bench HardArtificial Analysis–43.9%
τ²-Bench Telecom (AA)Artificial Analysis–97.7%
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals)Vals AI87.6%†53.2%
HiL-BenchScale AI SEAL59.0%†–
GDPval-AA v2.1, normalised scoreArtificial Analysis68.3%–
GDPval-AA v2.1Artificial Analysis1866–
τ³-Banking (AA)Artificial Analysis–20.8%
ITBench SRE (AA)Artificial Analysis38.2%–
Analyst Agent (AA)Artificial Analysis56.3%–
CUA-benchVals AI14.0%–
CyberBenchVals AI55.4%†–
Finance Agent v2Vals AI58.6%†40.9%
Finance Agent v2.1Vals AI67.8%†–
Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1.1Vals AI9.2%†–
Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1Vals AI3.8%†1.3%
Legal Research BenchVals AI50.5%†14.9%
Robo-benchVals AI14.6%–
SREBenchVals AI33.6%†–
Tax Agent BenchVals AI45.6%†7.7%
Terminal-Bench 2.0 (Vals)Vals AI–44.9%
Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Vals)Vals AI65.2%†–
Terminal-Bench ScienceVals AI47.1%†–
Time Horizon Index: KSPVals AI91.3%†–
Arena SearchArena (LMArena)1211†–
Vending-Bench 2Andon Labs9235.3†5114.9
AutomationBenchArtificial Analysis69.5%–
GDP.pdf (AA)Artificial Analysis26.2%–
Harvey LAB-AA v1.1Harvey4.2%–
AA-Briefcase v1.1Artificial Analysis1800–
Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 (AA)Artificial Analysis59.0%–
CWE-Bench (AA)Artificial Analysis58.3%–
DeepSec-Bench (AA)Artificial Analysis26.9%–
CyberGym end-to-end (AA)Artificial Analysis0.8%–
FACTS SearchGoogle86.5%†–
Maths
FrontierMath Tiers 1–3Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub91.2%38.3%
FrontierMath Tier 4Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub95.0%–
OTIS Mock AIMEEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub100.0%93.3%
ProofBenchVals AI100.0%–
LiveBench MathematicsLiveBench97.1%83.7%
AIME (Vals)Vals AI–94.6%
Arena MathsArena (LMArena)1512†1454
Knowledge
SimpleQA VerifiedEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub72.2%44.1%
LiveBench 2.0 Data AnalysisLiveBench80.3%†–
LiveBench ResearchLiveBench85.0%†–
LiveBench 1.0 Data AnalysisLiveBench80.3%69.9%
AA-Omniscience v1.1Artificial Analysis48.1–
MMLU-ProVals AI–87.7%
LegalBenchVals AI–84.2%
CorpFinVals AI–61.9%
TaxEvalVals AI–74.7%
PRBench LegalScale AI SEAL47.6%†–
BioMysteryBenchVals AI79.3%†–
CaseLaw v2Vals AI–51.5%
ClaimBenchVals AI100.0%†–
Excel Modeling BenchmarkVals AI75.9%†32.9%
Excel Modeling Benchmark v1.1Vals AI75.8%†–
MedCodeVals AI49.8%†36.9%
MedScribeVals AI91.4%†77.0%
Public Benefits Bench v1.1Vals AI70.6%†–
EBR-benchEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub71.4%–
GDP.pdfEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub30.6%–
AA-Omniscience v1.1: accuracyArtificial Analysis65.5%–
AA-Omniscience v1.1: non-hallucinationArtificial Analysis49.7%–
HealthBench Professional (AA)OpenAI59.9%–
Instruction following
LiveBench LanguageLiveBench86.3%75.0%
LiveBench Instruction FollowingLiveBench65.7%58.3%
IFBenchArtificial Analysis–75.2%
Arena Instruction FollowingArena (LMArena)1521†1435
Human preference
Arena TextArena (LMArena)1509†1443
EQ-Bench 4EQ-Bench1340†–
Arena Creative WritingArena (LMArena)1520†1407
Arena Multi-turnArena (LMArena)1503†1445
Arena Longer QueriesArena (LMArena)1524†1454
Multimodal
Arena VisionArena (LMArena)1321†–
LiveBench DesignLiveBench86.9%†–
MMMU-ProArtificial Analysis87.7%78.0%
MMMU-Pro (Vals)Vals AI–84.2%
MortgageTaxVals AI–68.0%
SAGEVals AI91.3%†–
Blueprint-Bench 2Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub51.2%†–
Code2Video-AAArtificial Analysis1536–
AA-3DArtificial Analysis1196–
Long context
AA-LCR v1.1Artificial Analysis84.7%78.3%
MLCRArtificial Analysis27.8%–
Composite
Epoch Capabilities IndexEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub168.8†147.3
LiveBench 2.0LiveBench85.1%†–
LiveBench 1.0LiveBench83.2%68.9%
AA Intelligence Index v5.0Artificial Analysis58.4–
AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2Artificial Analysis57.627.0
AA Progress Index v1Artificial Analysis350283.4
Vals IndexVals AI70.2†–
Vals Finance IndexVals AI65.6%†–
Vals RSI IndexVals AI37.3%–
Vals Science IndexVals AI58.6%†–
Vals Multimodal IndexVals AI–51.5%
Vals Router IndexVals AI64.2%†–
AA Cyber IndexArtificial Analysis28.7–
Safety & honesty
FORTRESSScale AI SEAL5.8%–

Data as of 2026-10-29. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.

What changed

  • Qwen3.6 Plus: Qwen3.6 Plus cached input price moved from $0.050/M to $0.028/M (45% down).
  • Claude Opus 5.5 (max): 5 new results (AA Intelligence Index v5.0, AA Progress Index v1, HLE-Diamond (AA)…); 3 score revisions; cost per task moved from $5.98/M to $10.04/M (68% up).
  • Qwen3.6 Plus: 1 new result (AA Progress Index v1).
  • Qwen3.6 Plus: BenchLeader Index 59.7 → 59.2.
  • Qwen3.6 Plus: Qwen3.6 Plus cached input price moved from $0.028/M to $0.050/M (81% up).
  • Claude Opus 5.5 (max): 1 score revision.
  • Qwen3.6 Plus: Qwen3.6 Plus cached input price moved from $0.050/M to $0.028/M (45% down).
  • Qwen3.6 Plus: Qwen3.6 Plus cached input price moved from $0.028/M to $0.050/M (81% up).
  • Claude Opus 5.5 (max): 2 new results (Robo-bench, Vals RSI Index).
  • Qwen3.6 Plus: 1 new result (Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1); Qwen3.6 Plus cached input price moved from $0.050/M to $0.028/M (45% down).

Rankings: Best LLM overall · Best LLM for coding · Best LLM for agents · Best cheap LLMs

Claude Opus 5.5 vs Qwen3.6 Plus: questions

Is Claude Opus 5.5 better than Qwen3.6 Plus?
Claude Opus 5.5 (max) leads on quality: 69.2 vs 59.1. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Claude Opus 5.5 (max) is ahead overall as of 29 Oct 2026, but check the category scores for your use.
Claude Opus 5.5 vs Qwen3.6 Plus: which is cheaper, and will that change?
Qwen3.6 Plus is cheaper today: $1.13 against $8.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token. No price change has been announced for either.
Is Claude Opus 5.5 or Qwen3.6 Plus better for coding?
Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher in coding (80 vs 51 on the category index, where 50 is average). On Arena WebDev, the top shared coding benchmark, it is 1809 for Claude Opus 5.5 against 1462 for Qwen3.6 Plus.
Which is faster, Claude Opus 5.5 or Qwen3.6 Plus?
Claude Opus 5.5 streams ~1.5× faster (98 vs 56 output tokens per second, Artificial Analysis 7-day median).
Is Claude Opus 5.5 or Qwen3.6 Plus better for agents and tool use?
Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher in agentic tasks (63 vs 53 on the category index, where 50 is average).
More questions (4)
Which is better for long documents?
Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher on long-context benchmarks (67 vs 64). Both accept 1,000,000 tokens of context.
Which has lower latency?
Qwen3.6 Plus answers first: 101.3 s against 648.2 s to the first answer token, as Artificial Analysis measures it. Reasoning effort drives most of this: a higher setting thinks longer before it answers.
Do independent benchmarks agree on Claude Opus 5.5 vs Qwen3.6 Plus?
Across the 22 benchmarks both have, Claude Opus 5.5 leads 22, Qwen3.6 Plus leads 0. Every overall index that rates both puts Claude Opus 5.5 ahead.
When was Claude Opus 5.5 released?
Claude Opus 5.5 was released on 22 Sept 2026.