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Claude Sonnet 5 vs Qwen3.6 Plus

Claude Sonnet 5 leads Qwen3.6 Plus on coding, 57.7 to 44.1 on the Vibe Coding Index, and Qwen3.6 Plus costs 5.1x less per output token ($1.95 vs $10.00 per million). Updated October 21, 2026; 77 benchmarks have a result for both.

Replace Claude Sonnet 5 Replace Qwen3.6 Plus
Claude Sonnet 5Anthropic
Coding
57.7
Overall
63.2
Output $/M
$10.00
68
Qwen3.6 PlusQwen
Coding
44.1
Overall
56.2
Output $/M
$1.95
8
vs boards won of 77 shared, 1 tied

Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3.6 Plus: which to pick

Pick Claude Sonnet 5 for coding: it scores 57.7 on the Vibe Coding Index against 44.1 for Qwen3.6 Plus.

Pick Qwen3.6 Plus for output tokens 5.1x cheaper ($1.95 vs $10.00 per million) and a lower cost per solved task ($1.19 against $1.87).

Model AClaude Sonnet 5Anthropic57.7/1006 independent benchmarks$1.87 per solved taskModel BQwen3.6 PlusQwen44.1/1003 independent benchmarks$1.19 per solved task
Shared results
77
Claude Sonnet 5 only
44
Qwen3.6 Plus only
6
Like-for-like categories
8 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.

At a glance

Coding index
Claude Sonnet 5 57.7 from 6 benchmarks, Qwen3.6 Plus 44.1 from 3 benchmarks.
Widest category
Agentic work, 20.6 points apart on average over 5 shared benchmarks.
Widest single gap
Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI): Claude Sonnet 5 81.3% against Qwen3.6 Plus 25.6%, 55.8 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
Output price
Claude Sonnet 5 $10.00 against Qwen3.6 Plus $1.95 per million output tokens, 5.1x 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.

Boards won, where both have a result
CategoryClaude Sonnet 5BarsQwen3.6 PlusTies
Coding1211 tie
Intelligence20
Agentic work50
Reasoning91
Math40
Knowledge83
Web design80
General203
All shared boards6881 tie
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index121
Coding benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen3.6 Plus
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.6 PlusLeader
LiveBench coding74.7%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
LMArena WebDev15401461Claude Sonnet 5
AA Coding Index71.554.5Claude Sonnet 5
LiveCodeBench (Vals AI)82.4%86.0%Qwen3.6 Plus
SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI)79.6%73.4%Claude Sonnet 5
Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI)10.6%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI)81.3%25.6%Claude Sonnet 5
Code migration (Vals AI)44.4%11.1%Claude Sonnet 5
ProgramBench (Vals AI)0.0%0.0%Tie
IOI (Vals AI)45.0%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI)74.5%53.2%Claude Sonnet 5
Vibe Code Bench 1-100 (Vals AI)13.8%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
SkillsBench (Vals AI)46.5%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
CyberBench (Vals AI)70.3%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
SciCode54.3%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run)Not measured43.9%Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured
FrontierCode42.7%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
GSO-Bench37.3%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
WeirdML68.8%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
ALE-Bench1463.1670.1Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: coding14831467Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: software and IT14741462Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena WebDev: React15411454Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena WebDev: HTML15271463Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena WebDev: from an image15401472Claude Sonnet 5
SciCode10.7%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 13 boards here
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
Intelligence benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen3.6 Plus
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.6 PlusLeader
AA Intelligence Index38.227.0Claude Sonnet 5
Epoch Capabilities Index156.9147.3Claude Sonnet 5
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index50
Agentic work benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen3.6 Plus
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.6 PlusLeader
AA Agentic Index43.6Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Design Arena: agents building web apps1245Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Design Arena: agents building full-stack apps1249Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Design Arena: agents building mobile apps1215Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Design Arena: agents building Android apps1225Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Design Arena: agents building Godot games1225Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Design Arena: agents building games1227Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Design Arena: HTML slides1218Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Design Arena: PowerPoint slides1216Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Design Arena: spreadsheets1021Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
LiveBench research82.8%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
LiveBench browser72.0%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
LiveBench long agentic39.0%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
SREBench (Vals AI)0.4%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Finance Agent (Vals AI)53.9%40.9%Claude Sonnet 5
Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI)29.4%7.7%Claude Sonnet 5
Legal Research Bench (Vals AI)41.8%14.9%Claude Sonnet 5
Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI)66.3%32.9%Claude Sonnet 5
Terminal-Bench-Science (Vals AI)5.7%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
τ²-Bench TelecomNot measured97.7%Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured
APEX-Agents54.5%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Vending-Bench 2$6,378$5,115Claude Sonnet 5
Neither model has a result on the other 19 boards here
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index91
Reasoning benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen3.6 Plus
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.6 PlusLeader
GPQA Diamond88.9%87.4%Claude Sonnet 5
LiveBench reasoning88.7%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
MMMU Pro (Vals AI)83.0%84.2%Qwen3.6 Plus
GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run)91.1%88.2%Claude Sonnet 5
Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run)41.3%27.8%Claude Sonnet 5
GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run)90.5%88.4%Claude Sonnet 5
SimpleBench60.6%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Chess puzzles45.0%14.0%Claude Sonnet 5
Mystery game puzzles35.0%12.0%Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: hard prompts14611448Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: expert14891454Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: hard prompts in English14641455Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Vision: diagrams1293Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
LMArena Vision: homework1311Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 8 boards here
MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index40
Math benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen3.6 Plus
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.6 PlusLeader
AIMENot measured94.6%Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured
OTIS Mock AIME94.7%93.3%Claude Sonnet 5
FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 365.6%38.2%Claude Sonnet 5
FrontierMath, tier 429.3%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
ProofBench77.0%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
LMArena Text: math14671449Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: mathematical work14811448Claude Sonnet 5
Neither model has a result on the other 6 boards here
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index83
Knowledge benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen3.6 Plus
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.6 PlusLeader
MMLU Pro87.5%87.7%Qwen3.6 Plus
LegalBench (Vals AI)83.9%84.2%Qwen3.6 Plus
CaseLaw (Vals AI)Not measured51.5%Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured
CorpFin (Vals AI)67.0%61.9%Claude Sonnet 5
TaxEval (Vals AI)75.6%74.7%Claude Sonnet 5
MortgageTax (Vals AI)70.0%68.0%Claude Sonnet 5
MedCode (Vals AI)47.5%36.9%Claude Sonnet 5
SimpleQA Verified33.7%44.1%Qwen3.6 Plus
LMArena Text: science14601439Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare14421442Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: legal and government14541437Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: business and finance14361430Claude Sonnet 5
Neither model has a result on the other 6 boards here
Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index80
Web design benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen3.6 Plus
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.6 PlusLeader
Design Arena: websites12741243Claude Sonnet 5
Design Arena: UI components12801233Claude Sonnet 5
Design Arena: game dev12781211Claude Sonnet 5
Design Arena: data viz12511228Claude Sonnet 5
Design Arena: 3D12611202Claude Sonnet 5
Design Arena: all code categories12761236Claude Sonnet 5
Design Arena: SVG11931161Claude Sonnet 5
Design Arena: ASCII art12071113Claude Sonnet 5
LiveBench design82.0%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index203
General benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen3.6 Plus
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.6 PlusLeader
LiveBench data analysis71.7%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI)66.0%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
SAGE (Vals AI)48.9%44.9%Claude Sonnet 5
MedScribe (Vals AI)76.0%77.0%Qwen3.6 Plus
Vals Multimodal Index68.8%51.5%Claude Sonnet 5
IFBenchNot measured75.2%Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured
Long context reasoning (AA-LCR)82.0%78.3%Claude Sonnet 5
DTBench92.5%81.9%Claude Sonnet 5
LMCA50.0%33.1%Claude Sonnet 5
CL-benchNot measured20.3%Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured
Surface Evolver Bench60.0%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
LMArena Text14421436Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: instruction following14521424Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: creative writing14161404Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Vision1273Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
LMArena Text: English14501445Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: non-English14311424Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: Chinese14781477Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: German14421451Qwen3.6 Plus
LMArena Text: Japanese14221390Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: Korean14121379Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: French14631455Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: Spanish14381432Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: Russian14501434Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: Polish14251433Qwen3.6 Plus
LMArena Text: multi-turn14531438Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: longer queries14621439Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: writing and language14361418Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Text: entertainment and media14111402Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Vision: English1275Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
LMArena Vision: Chinese1331Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
LMArena Vision: reading text1288Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
LMArena Vision: humor1261Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
LMArena Vision: creative writing1246Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
LMArena Document1466Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 5 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 11 boards here
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
Image generation benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen3.6 Plus
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.6 PlusLeader
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

Claude Sonnet 5$0.0070Fits in one request
Qwen3.6 Plus$0.0013Fits in one request

Qwen3.6 Plus costs less

Repository review

50K input + 3K output tokens

Claude Sonnet 5$0.130Fits in one request
Qwen3.6 Plus$0.022Fits in one request

Qwen3.6 Plus costs less

Agent loop

200K input + 10K output tokens

Claude Sonnet 5$0.500Fits in one request
Qwen3.6 Plus$0.085Fits in one request

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.

Specifications of Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen3.6 Plus
SpecificationAnthropic Claude Sonnet 5Qwen3.6 Plus
MakerAnthropicQwen
WeightsNo public weights listedNo public weights listed
ReleasedJune 30, 2026April 2, 2026
Context window1M1M
Input $/Mtok$2.00$0.325
Output $/Mtok$10.00$1.95
Coding index57.744.1
Independent measurements behind it63
Cost per solved task$1.87$1.19
SourceOpenRouter listingOpenRouter listing

Questions

Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Qwen3.6 Plus for coding?

Pick Claude Sonnet 5 for coding: it scores 57.7 on the Vibe Coding Index against 44.1 for Qwen3.6 Plus. Pick Qwen3.6 Plus for output tokens 5.1x cheaper ($1.95 vs $10.00 per million) and a lower cost per solved task ($1.19 against $1.87).

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3.6 Plus?

Claude Sonnet 5 costs $2.00 per million input tokens and $10.00 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Plus costs $0.325 and $1.95. Per solved SWE-bench Verified task, Claude Sonnet 5 costs $1.87 and Qwen3.6 Plus $1.19.

Which has the bigger context window, Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3.6 Plus?

Neither: both take 1M tokens.

How many benchmarks is the Claude Sonnet 5 vs Qwen3.6 Plus comparison based on?

77 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. Claude Sonnet 5's coding index rests on 6 independent benchmarks and Qwen3.6 Plus's on 3. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.

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<p style="font:13px/1.4 sans-serif;margin:6px 0 0">Source: <a href="https://llmbenchmark.ai/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-qwen3-6-plus">LLMBenchmark.ai, Claude Sonnet 5 vs Qwen3.6 Plus</a></p>