Claude Sonnet 5 vs Qwen3 6
Claude Sonnet 5 
Qwen3 6 Verdict
- Qwen3 6 (max) leads on quality: 63.3 vs 61.4.
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high) is stronger in coding, composite, human preference, multimodal, reasoning.
- Qwen3 6 (max) is stronger in agents & tools, knowledge, long context, instruction following, maths.
- Qwen3 6 (max) is 1.3× cheaper ($2.96 vs $4.00 per 1M blended).
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (high) | Qwen3 6 (max) |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 61.4 | 63.3 |
| Agents & tools score | 61.8 | 72.0 |
| Coding score | 61.6 | 58.2 |
| Composite score | 69.5 | 64.9 |
| Human preference score | 66.2 | 65.9 |
| Knowledge score | 62.4 | 64.0 |
| Long context score | 64.8 | 66.9 |
| Multimodal score | 63.1 | – |
| Reasoning score | 66.8 | 63.2 |
| Instruction following score | – | 74.2 |
| Maths score | – | 64.2 |
| Blended price $/M | $4.00 | $2.96 |
| Output speed | 60 tok/s | 59 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 10.0 s | 38.5 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% |
| SciCode | 48.6% | – |
| WeirdML | 68.8% | – |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | – | 149.3 |
| LMArena Text | 1462 | 1460 |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1490 | 1482 |
| LMArena Coding | 1521 | 1509 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1538 | 1479 |
| LMArena Vision | 1278 | – |
| LMArena Agent | 6.3 | – |
| AA Intelligence Index | 32.0 | 28.4 |
| IFBench | – | 76.6% |
| AA-LCR | 76.7% | 80.7% |
| AA-Omniscience | -3.7 | 9.2 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | – | 43.9% |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | – | 88.8% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 35.7% | 30.8% |
| SciCode (AA) | 54.3% | – |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | – | 95.9% |
| CorpFin | – | 66.5% |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | – | 72.8% |
Data as of 2026-09-10. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
Claude Sonnet 5 vs Qwen3 6: questions
- Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Qwen3 6?
- Qwen3 6 (max) leads on quality: 63.3 vs 61.4. 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 Sonnet 5 better than Qwen3 6 for coding?
- Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher in coding (62 vs 58 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Qwen3 6 for agentic tasks?
- Qwen3 6 scores higher in agentic tasks (72 vs 62 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3 6?
- Qwen3 6 is cheaper: $2.96 against $4.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
- Which is faster, Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3 6?
- Claude Sonnet 5 streams faster: 60 against 59 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Claude Sonnet 5 accepts more context: 1M against 246k tokens.