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Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 5 vs Qwen3.5-35B-A3B

Data verified

Head-to-head evidence from 14 shared benchmark results across 5 categories. Overall scores shown here use the public BenchAlign v5 ranking lane.

65.32/100
Margin
8.3pts
← winning
56.97/100
2 category wins1 category wins

Public leaderboard positions: Claude Sonnet 5 #29 (Estimated); Qwen3.5-35B-A3B #72 (Supported). Intervals and evidence labels describe ranking uncertainty, not a guarantee for a specific workload.

Evidence parity. Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen3.5-35B-A3B share 14 comparable benchmark results. 3 of 8 categories are comparable. 22 results are unique to Claude Sonnet 5; 14 to Qwen3.5-35B-A3B.

Updated July 23, 2026
Shared results
14
Claude Sonnet 5 only
22
Qwen3.5-35B-A3B only
14
Comparable categories
3 / 8

Pick Claude Sonnet 5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Qwen3.5-35B-A3B only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.

Confidence note. This is a partial-evidence comparison with 14 shared benchmark results across 5 evidence categories; 3 of 8 categories currently have scoreable aggregates for both models. Treat the verdict as directional until coverage is more balanced.

Why this result

Claude Sonnet 5 is clearly ahead on the BenchAlign aggregate, 65.32 to 56.97. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude Sonnet 5's sharpest advantage is in agentic, where it averages 81.9 against 51. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is Terminal-Bench 2.0, 80.4% to 40.5%. Qwen3.5-35B-A3B does hit back in knowledge, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Claude Sonnet 5 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $2.00 input / $10.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.00 input / $0.00 output per 1M tokens for Qwen3.5-35B-A3B. That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. Claude Sonnet 5 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 262K for Qwen3.5-35B-A3B.

Category breakdown

Exact category averages are shown below. Not measured means BenchLM does not have enough sourced public coverage for that model and category.

Category scores and score margins for Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen3.5-35B-A3B
CategoryClaude Sonnet 5ΔQwen3.5-35B-A3B
AgenticClaude Sonnet 581.9Margin← 30.9Qwen3.5-35B-A3B51.0
KnowledgeClaude Sonnet 557.4Margin→ 24.2Qwen3.5-35B-A3B81.6
CodingClaude Sonnet 576.7Margin← 16.1Qwen3.5-35B-A3B60.6
ReasoningClaude Sonnet 5Not measuredMarginNo overlapQwen3.5-35B-A3B59.0
MultilingualClaude Sonnet 5Not measuredMarginNo overlapQwen3.5-35B-A3B81.0
MultimodalClaude Sonnet 588.3MarginNo overlapQwen3.5-35B-A3BNot measured
Inst. FollowingClaude Sonnet 5Not measuredMarginNo overlapQwen3.5-35B-A3B91.9

Decisive benchmark drivers

The largest measured benchmark gaps in this matchup, with exact reported values.

More
A · Claude Sonnet 5B · Qwen3.5-35B-A3B

  1. Terminal-Bench 2.0

    Agentic
    Source ↗
    A 80.4%B 40.5%
    Winner: Claude Sonnet 5Δ 39.9
    Terminal-Bench 2.0: Claude Sonnet 5 scored 80.4%; Qwen3.5-35B-A3B scored 40.5%. Claude Sonnet 5 wins this benchmark.

  2. OSWorld-Verified

    Agentic
    Source ↗
    A 81.2%B 54.5%
    Winner: Claude Sonnet 5Δ 26.7
    OSWorld-Verified: Claude Sonnet 5 scored 81.2%; Qwen3.5-35B-A3B scored 54.5%. Claude Sonnet 5 wins this benchmark.

  3. BrowseComp

    Agentic
    Source ↗
    A 84.7%B 61%
    Winner: Claude Sonnet 5Δ 23.7
    BrowseComp: Claude Sonnet 5 scored 84.7%; Qwen3.5-35B-A3B scored 61%. Claude Sonnet 5 wins this benchmark.

  4. SWE-bench Verified

    Coding
    Source ↗
    A 85.2%B 69.2%
    Winner: Claude Sonnet 5Δ 16
    SWE-bench Verified: Claude Sonnet 5 scored 85.2%; Qwen3.5-35B-A3B scored 69.2%. Claude Sonnet 5 wins this benchmark.

Operational comparison

Runtime and commercial metrics are compared only when both models have a complete sourced value.

MetricClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.5-35B-A3BComparison
Input / output priceUSD per 1M tokensClaude Sonnet 5$2 input / $10 outputQwen3.5-35B-A3B$0 input / $0 outputQwen3.5-35B-A3B has the lower combined listed price.
Generation speedtokens per secondClaude Sonnet 5Not availableQwen3.5-35B-A3BNot availableA complete speed comparison is not available.
First-answer latencyseconds to first tokenClaude Sonnet 5Not availableQwen3.5-35B-A3BNot availableA complete latency comparison is not available.
Context windowmaximum listed tokensClaude Sonnet 51MQwen3.5-35B-A3B262KClaude Sonnet 5 lists the larger context window.

Benchmark Deep Dive

AgenticClaude Sonnet 5 wins
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.5-35B-A3BResult
Terminal-Bench 2.0Source 80.4%40.5%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
BrowseCompSource 84.7%61%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
HLE w/ toolsSource 57.4%—Not comparable
OSWorld-VerifiedSource 81.2%54.5%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
GDPval-AASource 1607—Not comparable
AA Agentic IndexSource 46.7%—Not comparable
GDPval-AASource 55.4%—Not comparable
AA BriefcaseSource 1388—Not comparable
AA AutomationBenchSource 39.2%—Not comparable
AA EnterpriseOps-GymSource 44.7%—Not comparable
AA Harvey LABSource 90.1%—Not comparable
AA Tau3 BankingSource 28.2%—Not comparable
aaTerminalBench21Source 80.5%—Not comparable
τ²-bench resultsSource —89.2%Not comparable
Gert LabsSource —28.96%Not comparable
CodingClaude Sonnet 5 wins
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.5-35B-A3BResult
SWE-bench VerifiedSource 85.2%69.2%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
SWE-bench ProSource 63.2%—Not comparable
SWE MultilingualSource 78.3%—Not comparable
SWE MultimodalSource 28.1%—Not comparable
Terminal-Bench 2.0Source 80.4%—Not comparable
FrontierCode 1.1 MainSource 42.7%—Not comparable
cursorBench32Source 61.5%—Not comparable
AA Coding IndexSource 71.5%—Not comparable
AA-SciCodeSource 53.6%37.7%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
SWE-RebenchSource —53.7%Not comparable
Reasoning
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.5-35B-A3BResult
AA-LCRSource 70.7%62.7%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
CritPtSource 16.9%0.9%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
LongBench v2Source —59%Not comparable
KnowledgeQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.5-35B-A3BResult
HLESource 57.4%—Not comparable
HLE w/o toolsSource 43.2%—Not comparable
Artificial Analysis Intelligence IndexSource 53.4%29.3%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
AA-GPQA DiamondSource 91.1%84.5%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
AA-HLESource 39.6%19.7%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
AA-Omniscience IndexSource 15.3%-46.4%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
AA-Omniscience AccuracySource 38.3%20.5%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
AA-Omniscience Hallucination RateSource 37.3%84.0%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
MMLU-ProSource —85.3%Not comparable
SuperGPQASource —63.4%Not comparable
GPQASource —84.2%Not comparable
Multilingual
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.5-35B-A3BResult
MMLU-ProXSource —81%Not comparable
Multimodal
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.5-35B-A3BResult
CharXivSource 88.3%—Not comparable
CharXiv w/o toolsSource 77%—Not comparable
AA-MMMU-ProSource 77.3%72.7%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Design Arena WebsiteSource 1314—Not comparable
MMMUSource —81.4%Not comparable
MMVUSource —72.3%Not comparable
MathVisionSource —83.9%Not comparable
V*Source —92.7%Not comparable
Inst. Following
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.5-35B-A3BResult
IFEvalSource —91.9%Not comparable
AA-IFBenchSource —72.5%Not comparable
Frequently Asked Questions (4)

Which is better, Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Claude Sonnet 5 is ahead on BenchLM's BenchAlign leaderboard, 65.32 to 56.97. The biggest single separator in this matchup is Terminal-Bench 2.0, where the scores are 80.4% and 40.5%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 81.6 versus 57.4. Inside this category, AA-Omniscience Index is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Claude Sonnet 5 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 76.7 versus 60.6. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Claude Sonnet 5 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 81.9 versus 51. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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