Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Qwen3.6 Plus
Updated October 21, 2026. 78 benchmarks have a result for both. Coding is ranked on the Vibe Coding Index; every other board is shown as published.
Decision reading
Pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 for coding: it scores 57.8 on the Vibe Coding Index against 37.4 for Qwen3.6 Plus.
Pick Qwen3.6 Plus when output tokens cost 7.7x less, or when a solved task costs $1.19 against $1.68.
- Shared results
- 78
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 only
- 39
- Qwen3.6 Plus only
- 5
- Like-for-like categories
- 8 of 9
Shared results can support a head-to-head reading. Results only one model has describe coverage, not superiority.
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, four public coding benchmarks
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores 57.8 against 37.4.
2 and 1 benchmarks behind the scores
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads, 30.1 against 27.0.
Same board, both measured
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
No call
Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 has a AA Agentic Index result, 31.8.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
Qwen3.6 Plus
Qwen3.6 Plus leads, 87.4% against 85.6%.
Same board, both measured
Math
AIME
Qwen3.6 Plus
Qwen3.6 Plus leads, 94.6% against 92.3%.
Same board, both measured
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
Qwen3.6 Plus
Qwen3.6 Plus leads, 87.7% against 87.3%.
Same board, both measured
Web design
Design Arena: websites
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads, 1285 against 1243.
Same board, both measured
Long documents
Listed context window
No call
Both take 1M tokens.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Qwen3.6 Plus
Claude Sonnet 4.6 $0.011, Qwen3.6 Plus $0.0013 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
Qwen3.6 Plus
Claude Sonnet 4.6 $1.68, Qwen3.6 Plus $1.19.
Published attempt cost and pass rate
At a glance
- Coding index
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 57.8 from 2 benchmarks, Qwen3.6 Plus 37.4 from 1 benchmark.
- Widest category
- Agentic work, 18.4 points apart on average over 6 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI): Claude Sonnet 4.6 55.8% against Qwen3.6 Plus 25.6%, 30.2 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 $15.00 against Qwen3.6 Plus $1.95 per million output tokens, 7.7x apart.
- Context window
- Both take 1M tokens.
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 Sonnet 4.6 | Bars | Qwen3.6 Plus | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 13 | 1 | ||
| Intelligence | 2 | 0 | ||
| Agentic work | 5 | 1 | ||
| Reasoning | 6 | 4 | ||
| Math | 2 | 2 | ||
| Knowledge | 7 | 4 | ||
| Web design | 8 | 0 | ||
| General | 21 | 2 | ||
| All shared boards | 64 | 14 |
CodingLike-for-likeFour of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index131
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench coding | 66.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| LMArena WebDev | 1523 | 1461 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| AA Coding Index | 63.0 | 54.5 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 82.1% | 86.0% | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | 77.4% | 73.4% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 55.8% | 25.6% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | 39.9% | 11.1% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| ProgramBench (Vals AI) | 0.5% | 0.0% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | 57.3% | 53.2% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| SkillsBench (Vals AI) | 49.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| SciCode | 50.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 53.0% | 43.9% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Terminal-Bench | 53.4% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| FrontierCode | 24.3% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| WeirdML | 66.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| ALE-Bench | Not measured | 670.1 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1503 | 1467 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1491 | 1462 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena WebDev: React | 1512 | 1454 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1527 | 1463 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena WebDev: from an image | 1529 | 1472 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Neither model has a result on the other 17 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 30.1 | 27.0 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 152.8 | 147.3 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index51
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | 31.8 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building web apps | 1190 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building full-stack apps | 1213 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building mobile apps | 1212 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Android apps | 1202 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Godot games | 1226 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building games | 1177 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| LiveBench research | 63.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| LiveBench browser | 68.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| LiveBench long agentic | 23.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | 51.0% | 40.9% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | 25.8% | 7.7% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | 38.5% | 14.9% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | 60.2% | 32.9% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 79.5% | 97.7% | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| APEX-Agents | 43.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 9.3% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| DeepResearch Bench | 54.9% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| OSWorld | 72.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | $7,204 | $5,115 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Neither model has a result on the other 19 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index64
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 85.6% | 87.4% | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| LiveBench reasoning | 86.4% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 83.6% | 84.2% | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 87.5% | 88.2% | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 33.6% | 27.8% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 87.4% | 88.4% | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| ARC-AGI | 86.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 60.4% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| Chess puzzles | 23.0% | 14.0% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Mystery game puzzles | 16.0% | 12.0% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1485 | 1448 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1500 | 1454 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1493 | 1455 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Vision: diagrams | 1306 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: homework | 1311 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 6 boards here | |||
MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index22
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | 92.3% | 94.6% | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 85.8% | 93.3% | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | Not measured | 38.2% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| ProofBench | 45.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1462 | 1449 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1483 | 1448 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index74
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 87.3% | 87.7% | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 82.1% | 84.2% | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| CaseLaw (Vals AI) | 64.0% | 51.5% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 65.3% | 61.9% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 77.1% | 74.7% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 67.7% | 68.0% | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | 92.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | Not measured | 36.9% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| SimpleQA Verified | 35.5% | 44.1% | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| LMArena Text: science | 1474 | 1439 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1451 | 1442 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1470 | 1437 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1464 | 1430 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Neither model has a result on the other 4 boards here | |||
Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index80
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1285 | 1243 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1271 | 1233 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1259 | 1211 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1278 | 1228 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1234 | 1202 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1276 | 1236 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1196 | 1160 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | 1235 | 1115 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LiveBench design | 71.8% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index212
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench data analysis | 76.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI) | 62.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 46.6% | 44.9% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | Not measured | 77.0% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Vals Multimodal Index | 60.6% | 51.5% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| IFBench | 56.6% | 75.2% | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 80.0% | 78.3% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| DTBench | 89.9% | 81.9% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMCA | 46.5% | 33.1% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| CL-bench | Not measured | 20.3% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| ExploitBench | 23.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text | 1458 | 1436 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1476 | 1424 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1435 | 1404 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Vision | 1283 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1472 | 1445 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1440 | 1424 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1491 | 1477 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: German | 1428 | 1451 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1420 | 1390 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1410 | 1379 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: French | 1465 | 1455 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1464 | 1432 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1440 | 1434 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1443 | 1433 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1464 | 1438 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1479 | 1439 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1444 | 1418 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1431 | 1402 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| LMArena Vision: English | 1298 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: Chinese | 1307 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: reading text | 1296 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: humor | 1248 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: recognizing things | 1195 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: creative writing | 1272 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| LMArena Document | 1482 | Not measured | Only Claude Sonnet 4.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 10 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.6 Plus | 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
Qwen3.6 Plus costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Qwen3.6 Plus costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Qwen3.6 Plus 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 Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Anthropic | Qwen |
| Weights | No public weights listed | No public weights listed |
| Released | February 17, 2026 | April 2, 2026 |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Input $/Mtok | $3.00 | $0.325 |
| Output $/Mtok | $15.00 | $1.95 |
| Coding index | 57.8 | 37.4 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 2 | 1 |
| Cost per solved task | $1.68 | $1.19 |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than Qwen3.6 Plus for coding?
Pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 for coding: it scores 57.8 on the Vibe Coding Index against 37.4 for Qwen3.6 Plus. Pick Qwen3.6 Plus when output tokens cost 7.7x less, or when a solved task costs $1.19 against $1.68.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Qwen3.6 Plus?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 costs $3.00 per million input tokens and $15.00 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Plus costs $0.325 and $1.95. Per solved SWE-bench Verified task, Claude Sonnet 4.6 costs $1.68 and Qwen3.6 Plus $1.19.
Which has the bigger context window, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Qwen3.6 Plus?
Neither: both take 1M tokens.
How many benchmarks is the Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Qwen3.6 Plus comparison based on?
78 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. Claude Sonnet 4.6's coding index rests on 2 independent benchmarks and Qwen3.6 Plus's on 1. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.