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Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 5 vs Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

Data verified

Head-to-head evidence from 21 shared benchmark results across 5 categories. Overall scores shown here use the public BenchAlign v5 ranking lane.

65.32/100
Margin
13.8pts
← winning
51.47/100
4 category wins0 category wins

Public leaderboard positions: Claude Sonnet 5 #29 (Estimated); Qwen3.6-35B-A3B #104 (Estimated). Intervals and evidence labels describe ranking uncertainty, not a guarantee for a specific workload.

Evidence parity. Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen3.6-35B-A3B share 21 comparable benchmark results. 4 of 8 categories are comparable. 15 results are unique to Claude Sonnet 5; 36 to Qwen3.6-35B-A3B.

Updated July 23, 2026
Shared results
21
Claude Sonnet 5 only
15
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B only
36
Comparable categories
4 / 8

Pick Claude Sonnet 5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Qwen3.6-35B-A3B only becomes the better choice if its workflow or ecosystem matters more than the raw scoreboard.

Confidence note. This is a partial-evidence comparison with 21 shared benchmark results across 5 evidence categories; 4 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 51.47. 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 51.5. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HLE, 57.4% to 21.4%.

Claude Sonnet 5 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 262K for Qwen3.6-35B-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 Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
CategoryClaude Sonnet 5ΔQwen3.6-35B-A3B
AgenticClaude Sonnet 581.9Margin← 30.4Qwen3.6-35B-A3B51.5
MultimodalClaude Sonnet 588.3Margin← 12.0Qwen3.6-35B-A3B76.3
KnowledgeClaude Sonnet 557.4Margin← 6.0Qwen3.6-35B-A3B51.4
CodingClaude Sonnet 576.7Margin← 2.9Qwen3.6-35B-A3B73.8
MathClaude Sonnet 5Not measuredMarginNo overlapQwen3.6-35B-A3B88.2

Decisive benchmark drivers

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

More
A · Claude Sonnet 5B · Qwen3.6-35B-A3B

  1. HLE

    Knowledge
    Source ↗
    A 57.4%B 21.4%
    Winner: Claude Sonnet 5Δ 36
    HLE: Claude Sonnet 5 scored 57.4%; Qwen3.6-35B-A3B scored 21.4%. Claude Sonnet 5 wins this benchmark.

  2. Terminal-Bench 2.0

    Agentic
    Source ↗
    A 80.4%B 51.5%
    Winner: Claude Sonnet 5Δ 28.9
    Terminal-Bench 2.0: Claude Sonnet 5 scored 80.4%; Qwen3.6-35B-A3B scored 51.5%. Claude Sonnet 5 wins this benchmark.

  3. SWE-bench Pro

    Coding
    Source ↗
    A 63.2%B 49.5%
    Winner: Claude Sonnet 5Δ 13.7
    SWE-bench Pro: Claude Sonnet 5 scored 63.2%; Qwen3.6-35B-A3B scored 49.5%. Claude Sonnet 5 wins this benchmark.

  4. SWE-bench Verified

    Coding
    Source ↗
    A 85.2%B 73.4%
    Winner: Claude Sonnet 5Δ 11.8
    SWE-bench Verified: Claude Sonnet 5 scored 85.2%; Qwen3.6-35B-A3B scored 73.4%. Claude Sonnet 5 wins this benchmark.

  5. CharXiv

    Multimodal
    Source ↗
    A 88.3%B 78%
    Winner: Claude Sonnet 5Δ 10.3
    CharXiv: Claude Sonnet 5 scored 88.3%; Qwen3.6-35B-A3B scored 78%. 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 5Qwen3.6-35B-A3BComparison
Input / output priceUSD per 1M tokensClaude Sonnet 5$2 input / $10 outputQwen3.6-35B-A3BNot availableA complete price comparison is not available.
Generation speedtokens per secondClaude Sonnet 5Not availableQwen3.6-35B-A3BNot availableA complete speed comparison is not available.
First-answer latencyseconds to first tokenClaude Sonnet 5Not availableQwen3.6-35B-A3BNot availableA complete latency comparison is not available.
Context windowmaximum listed tokensClaude Sonnet 51MQwen3.6-35B-A3B262KClaude Sonnet 5 lists the larger context window.

Benchmark Deep Dive

AgenticClaude Sonnet 5 wins
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.6-35B-A3BResult
Terminal-Bench 2.0Source 80.4%51.5%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
BrowseCompSource 84.7%—Not comparable
HLE w/ toolsSource 57.4%—Not comparable
OSWorld-VerifiedSource 81.2%—Not comparable
GDPval-AASource 16071049Claude Sonnet 5 leads
AA Agentic IndexSource 46.7%21.4%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
GDPval-AASource 55.4%27.4%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
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
Claw-EvalSource —68.7%Not comparable
QwenClawBenchSource —52.6%Not comparable
QwenWebBenchSource —1397Not comparable
τ³-bench resultsSource —67.2%Not comparable
VITA-BenchSource —35.6%Not comparable
DeepPlanningSource —25.9%Not comparable
ToolathlonSource —26.9%Not comparable
MCP AtlasSource —62.8%Not comparable
WideResearchSource —60.1%Not comparable
τ²-bench resultsSource —95.3%Not comparable
Gert LabsSource —42.65%Not comparable
CodingClaude Sonnet 5 wins
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.6-35B-A3BResult
SWE-bench VerifiedSource 85.2%73.4%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
SWE-bench ProSource 63.2%49.5%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
SWE MultilingualSource 78.3%67.2%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
SWE MultimodalSource 28.1%—Not comparable
Terminal-Bench 2.0Source 80.4%51.5%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
FrontierCode 1.1 MainSource 42.7%—Not comparable
cursorBench32Source 61.5%—Not comparable
AA Coding IndexSource 71.5%41.9%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
AA-SciCodeSource 53.6%35.8%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
LiveCodeBenchSource —80.4%Not comparable
NL2RepoSource —29.4%Not comparable
Reasoning
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.6-35B-A3BResult
AA-LCRSource 70.7%63.7%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
CritPtSource 16.9%0.3%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
KnowledgeClaude Sonnet 5 wins
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.6-35B-A3BResult
HLESource 57.4%21.4%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
HLE w/o toolsSource 43.2%—Not comparable
Artificial Analysis Intelligence IndexSource 53.4%31.6%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
AA-GPQA DiamondSource 91.1%84.1%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
AA-HLESource 39.6%20.2%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
AA-Omniscience IndexSource 15.3%-21.4%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
AA-Omniscience AccuracySource 38.3%18.9%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
AA-Omniscience Hallucination RateSource 37.3%49.7%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
MMLU-ProSource —85.2%Not comparable
SuperGPQASource —64.7%Not comparable
C-EvalSource —90%Not comparable
GPQASource —86%Not comparable
Math
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.6-35B-A3BResult
HMMT Feb 2025Source —90.7%Not comparable
HMMT Nov 2025Source —89.1%Not comparable
HMMT Feb 2026Source —83.6%Not comparable
MMAnswerBenchSource —78.9%Not comparable
AIME26Source —92.7%Not comparable
MultimodalClaude Sonnet 5 wins
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.6-35B-A3BResult
CharXivSource 88.3%78%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
CharXiv w/o toolsSource 77%—Not comparable
AA-MMMU-ProSource 77.3%75.0%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Design Arena WebsiteSource 1314—Not comparable
MMMUSource —81.7%Not comparable
MMMU-ProSource —75.3%Not comparable
RealWorldQASource —85.3%Not comparable
OmniDocBench 1.5Source —89.9%Not comparable
SimpleVQASource —58.9%Not comparable
CC-OCRSource —81.9%Not comparable
AI2D_TESTSource —92.7%Not comparable
RefCOCO (avg)Source —92.0%Not comparable
ODINW13Source —50.8%Not comparable
Video-MME (with subtitle)Source —86.6%Not comparable
Video-MME (w/o subtitle)Source —82.5%Not comparable
VideoMMMUSource —83.7%Not comparable
MLVU (M-Avg)Source —86.2%Not comparable
Inst. Following
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Qwen3.6-35B-A3BResult
AA-IFBenchSource —64.4%Not comparable
Frequently Asked Questions (5)

Which is better, Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Claude Sonnet 5 is ahead on BenchLM's BenchAlign leaderboard, 65.32 to 51.47. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HLE, where the scores are 57.4% and 21.4%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Claude Sonnet 5 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 57.4 versus 51.4. 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 Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Claude Sonnet 5 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 76.7 versus 73.8. Inside this category, AA Coding Index is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Claude Sonnet 5 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 81.9 versus 51.5. Inside this category, GDPval-AA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3.6-35B-A3B?

Claude Sonnet 5 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 88.3 versus 76.3. Inside this category, CharXiv is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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