Claude Opus 4.6 vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
Claude Opus 4.6 leads Qwen2.5 72B Instruct on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, 31.9 to 7.7, and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct costs 62.5x less per output token ($0.40 vs $25.00 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 40 benchmarks have a result for both.
Claude Opus 4.6 or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: which to pick
Only Claude Opus 4.6 has a coding score, 57.2 on the Vibe Coding Index; Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Pick Qwen2.5 72B Instruct for output tokens 62.5x cheaper ($0.40 vs $25.00 per million).
- Shared results
- 40
- Claude Opus 4.6 only
- 70
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct only
- 13
- Like-for-like categories
- 7 of 9
Only benchmarks that tested both models count toward a pick; a result only one model has is shown but not compared.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
No call
Only Claude Opus 4.6 has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Claude Opus 4.6
Claude Opus 4.6 leads, 31.9 against 7.7.
Same board, both measured
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only Claude Opus 4.6 has a GPQA Diamond result, 89.7%.
Directional only
Math
AIME
No call
Only Claude Opus 4.6 has a AIME result, 95.6%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only Claude Opus 4.6 has a MMLU Pro result, 89.1%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only Claude Opus 4.6 has a Design Arena: websites result, 1291.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Claude Opus 4.6
Claude Opus 4.6 takes 1M tokens against 33K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
Claude Opus 4.6 $0.018, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct $0.0006 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only Claude Opus 4.6 has the number, $1.56.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- Claude Opus 4.6 57.2 from 4 benchmarks, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- Math, 54.9 points apart on average over 3 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- OTIS Mock AIME: Claude Opus 4.6 94.4% against Qwen2.5 72B Instruct 8.1%, 86.4 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Claude Opus 4.6 $25.00 against Qwen2.5 72B Instruct $0.40 per million output tokens, 62.5x apart.
- Context window
- Claude Opus 4.6 takes 1M tokens, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct 33K.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | Claude Opus 4.6 | Bars | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 4 | 0 | ||
| Intelligence | 2 | 0 | ||
| Agentic work | 2 | 0 | ||
| Reasoning | 6 | 0 | ||
| Math | 3 | 0 | ||
| Knowledge | 4 | 0 | ||
| General | 19 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 40 | 0 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index40
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | 75.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 72.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena WebDev | 1547 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 84.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | 78.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 57.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 27.6% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 48.5% | 4.5% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Terminal-Bench | 79.8% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| FrontierCode | 26.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| GSO-Bench | 41.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| WeirdML | 78.0% | 16.0% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Cybench | 93.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1534 | 1292 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1527 | 1292 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena WebDev: React | 1539 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1559 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: from an image | 1543 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 21 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 31.9 | 7.7 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 155.7 | 129.0 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: agents building web apps | 1206 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building full-stack apps | 1220 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building mobile apps | 1207 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Android apps | 1197 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building games | 1212 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 92.1% | 34.5% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| APEX-Agents | 46.3% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| METR time horizons | 78.9% | 35.8% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Remote Labor Index | 4.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| BALROG | Not measured | 16.2% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| DeepResearch Bench | 55.3% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| TheAgentCompany | Not measured | 5.7% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | $8,018 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 28 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index60
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 89.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 83.9% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 89.6% | 49.1% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 39.9% | 3.6% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 90.5% | 49.1% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| ARC-AGI | 94.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 69.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| SimpleBench | 67.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Chess puzzles | 21.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | 25.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| EBR-bench | 12.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| BIG-Bench Hard | Not measured | 79.8% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1525 | 1271 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1544 | 1245 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1530 | 1279 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Vision: diagrams | 1340 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: homework | 1337 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 83.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 4 boards here | |||
MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index30
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | 95.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| AA Math Index | Not measured | 14.0 | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 14.0% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 94.4% | 8.1% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | 66.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | 26.8% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| ProofBench | 50.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| MATH level 5 | Not measured | 63.2% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1518 | 1283 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1525 | 1290 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Neither model has a result on the other 3 boards here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index40
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 89.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 85.3% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| CaseLaw (Vals AI) | 62.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 67.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 76.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 68.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | 95.4% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 49.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 72.0% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| SimpleQA Verified | 47.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| MMLU | Not measured | 85.3% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| AI2 Reasoning Challenge | Not measured | 94.5% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1519 | 1275 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1504 | 1258 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1512 | 1288 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1497 | 1253 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| FACTS Benchmark Suite | 41.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index8 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1291 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1281 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1277 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1279 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1273 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1288 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1227 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | 1255 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index190
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 51.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 86.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| IFBench | 53.1% | 36.9% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 78.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| DTBench | 91.2% | 62.9% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMCA | 55.8% | 13.4% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| CL-bench | 20.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Furniture assembly | 28.3% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| HellaSwag | Not measured | 84.8% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| WinoGrande | Not measured | 82.3% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| PIQA | Not measured | 82.6% | Only Qwen2.5 72B Instruct measured |
| CL-bench Life | 17.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text | 1501 | 1269 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1521 | 1254 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1505 | 1221 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Vision | 1316 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1511 | 1283 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1488 | 1252 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1551 | 1273 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: German | 1500 | 1234 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1488 | 1180 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1464 | 1188 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: French | 1512 | 1280 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1510 | 1255 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1497 | 1264 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1499 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1511 | 1272 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1518 | 1281 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1502 | 1247 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1492 | 1211 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| LMArena Vision: English | 1324 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: Chinese | 1370 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: reading text | 1326 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: humor | 1314 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: recognizing things | 1274 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: creative writing | 1331 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Document | 1507 | Not measured | Only Claude Opus 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 9 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | Anthropic Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Anthropic | Qwen |
| Weights | No public weights listed | Open weights |
| Released | February 4, 2026 | September 19, 2024 |
| Context window | 1M | 33K |
| Input $/Mtok | $5.00 | $0.36 |
| Output $/Mtok | $25.00 | $0.40 |
| Coding index | 57.2 | Not benchmarked |
| Independent measurements behind it | 4 | 0 |
| Cost per solved task | $1.56 | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Qwen2.5 72B Instruct for coding?
Only Claude Opus 4.6 has a coding score, 57.2 on the Vibe Coding Index; Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick Qwen2.5 72B Instruct for output tokens 62.5x cheaper ($0.40 vs $25.00 per million).
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.6 or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?
Claude Opus 4.6 costs $5.00 per million input tokens and $25.00 per million output tokens; Qwen2.5 72B Instruct costs $0.36 and $0.40. Cost per solved task is known for Claude Opus 4.6 only.
Which has the bigger context window, Claude Opus 4.6 or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?
Claude Opus 4.6, with 1M tokens against 33K.
How many benchmarks is the Claude Opus 4.6 vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct comparison based on?
40 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. Claude Opus 4.6's coding index rests on 4 independent benchmarks and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct's on 0. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.