Claude Sonnet 5 vs Qwen3 8
Claude Sonnet 5 
Qwen3 8 Verdict
- Qwen3 8 (max) leads on quality: 63.6 vs 61.4.
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high) is stronger in agents & tools, knowledge.
- Qwen3 8 (max) is stronger in coding, composite, human preference, long context, multimodal, reasoning, maths.
- Qwen3 8 (max) is 1.5× cheaper ($2.67 vs $4.00 per 1M blended).
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high) streams 1.6× faster (60 vs 38 tokens per second).
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (high) | Qwen3 8 (max) |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 61.4 | 63.6 |
| Agents & tools score | 61.8 | 56.0 |
| Coding score | 61.6 | 69.7 |
| Composite score | 69.5 | 70.9 |
| Human preference score | 66.2 | 68.3 |
| Knowledge score | 62.4 | 62.3 |
| Long context score | 64.8 | 65.7 |
| Multimodal score | 63.1 | 67.2 |
| Reasoning score | 66.8 | 68.1 |
| Maths score | – | 62.4 |
| Blended price $/M | $4.00 | $2.67 |
| Output speed | 60 tok/s | 38 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 10.0 s | 55.3 s |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| SciCode | 48.6% | 52.9% |
| WeirdML | 68.8% | – |
| ProofBench | – | 58.0% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | – | 156.6 |
| LMArena Text | 1462 | 1480 |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1490 | 1502 |
| LMArena Coding | 1521 | 1520 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1538 | 1670 |
| LMArena Vision | 1278 | 1313 |
| LMArena Agent | 6.3 | 3.9 |
| LiveBench | – | 78.5% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | – | 88.2% |
| LiveBench Coding | – | 72.9% |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | – | 64.7% |
| LiveBench Mathematics | – | 91.3% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | – | 78.4% |
| LiveBench Language | – | 79.7% |
| AA Intelligence Index | 32.0 | 40.3 |
| AA-LCR | 76.7% | 78.3% |
| MMMU-Pro | – | 82.3% |
| AA-Omniscience | -3.7 | 3.4 |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | – | 92.7% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 35.7% | 43.0% |
| SciCode (AA) | 54.3% | 53.2% |
| LiveCodeBench | – | 87.8% |
| MMLU-Pro | – | 88.6% |
| IOI | – | 73.0% |
| LegalBench | – | 83.6% |
| CorpFin | – | 65.8% |
| TaxEval | – | 75.5% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | – | 67.4% |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | – | 85.6% |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | – | 93.7% |
| Vals Index | – | 51.8 |
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 8: questions
- Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Qwen3 8?
- Qwen3 8 (max) leads on quality: 63.6 vs 61.4. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Qwen3 8 (max) is ahead overall as of 2026-09-10, but check the category scores for your use.
- Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Qwen3 8 for coding?
- Qwen3 8 scores higher in coding (70 vs 62 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Qwen3 8 for agentic tasks?
- Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher in agentic tasks (62 vs 56 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3 8?
- Qwen3 8 is cheaper: $2.67 against $4.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
- Which is faster, Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3 8?
- Claude Sonnet 5 streams faster: 60 against 38 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Both accept 1M tokens of context.