Compare / Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507 vs Claude Sonnet 4.5

Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507 vs Claude Sonnet 4.5

Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 25 results on 4 sources that measured both models.

AlibabaQwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507 Released 21 Jul 2025 · $0.15 in · $0.75 out
AnthropicClaude Sonnet 4.5 Released 29 Sep 2025 · $3.00 in · $15.00 out
Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507 wins 2Claude Sonnet 4.5 wins 23

Of the 25 results both models have, the better value on each. Results whose reported ranges overlap are too close to call.

Results as of 9 October 2026 (catalogue release 2026-10-09-dd620e778ac5). See also Alibaba vs Anthropic, every model from both labs.

Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507 or Claude Sonnet 4.5? The short answer

Pick Claude Sonnet 4.5 if quality matters most: it scores higher (Intelligence Index 20.7 against 12.0). Pick Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507 if cost matters more: it costs 20 times less per token.

  • Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507 is cheaper: $0.30 against $6.00 per million tokens, 20 times less.
  • Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 20.7 against 12.0.
  • Claude Sonnet 4.5 is newer: released 29 Sep 2025, against 21 Jul 2025 for Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507.
  • On third-party benchmarks, on the results both models have: Claude Sonnet 4.5 does better for agents and tool use, reasoning and knowledge, writing and sticking to the facts.

Head to head

12.0
Intelligence Index
20.7
$0.30
Price per million tokens, blendedlower is better
$6.00
262,144
Context window, tokens
1,000,000

Every fact side by side

Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507Claude Sonnet 4.5
Price per million tokens$0.15 in · $0.75 out$3.00 in · $15.00 out
Blended (3 in : 1 out)$0.30$6.00
Cheapest host, blended$0.15 (GMICloud, FP8)$6.00 (Amazon Bedrock)
Intelligence Index12.020.7
Spring Prompt overall––
Output speed, tokens a second––
Context window262,144 tokens1,000,000 tokens
Released21 Jul 202529 Sep 2025 (newer)
WeightsOpenClosed
Developer based inChinathe US

Prices are the developer's list price where we have read it, otherwise the typical host on OpenRouter; see every model's price. Intelligence and speed from Artificial Analysis.

Which is better for what

Each model's rank among the models on sale today, for each kind of work, from our own benchmarks and licensed sources. Further right is better; the better rank is in green.

Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls 51 of 164 99 of 164
Professional workReal tasks from banking, consulting and law, business documents and freelance projects not measured 40 of 51
Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge 129 of 198 98 of 198
WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality 85 of 188 34 of 188
Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers 98 of 152 101 of 152

Every shared result

Each model's best result on every measure both have, grouped by benchmark, with the setting that produced it. Under each measure, every model that benchmark has measured is a grey tick, best to the right, so you can see where the two sit in the field. The headline measures of each benchmark come first; the rest are under "Show all". Green marks the better value; where a source reports ranges that overlap, neither is marked.

MeasureQwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507Claude Sonnet 4.5
Arena (formerly LMArena) reported by Arena (formerly LMArena) · 3 results
Overall · TextArena rating, higher is better 109 · 56 of 387 measured 1,422 1,457high-32k reasoning
Overall · Text factualityArena rating, higher is better 94 · 61 of 163 measured 1,431 1,449
Business, management and finance · TextArena rating, higher is better 97 · 51 of 380 measured 1,432 1,461
Artificial Analysis reported by Artificial Analysis · 3 results
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score, higher is better 153 · 101 of 243 measured 12.0 20.7thinking reasoning
GPQA Diamond% of questions, higher is better 136 · 94 of 231 measured 75.3% 83.4%thinking reasoning
Humanity's Last Exam% of questions, higher is better 144 · 116 of 242 measured 11.1% 17.8%thinking reasoning
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4 reported by Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4 · 3 results
Overall accuracy · BFCL% correct, higher is better 20 · 2 of 81 measured 52.2%bfcl prompt 73.2%bfcl fc
Irrelevance detection · BFCL% correct, higher is better 41 · 5 of 81 measured 81.7%bfcl fc 95.0%bfcl prompt
Memory · BFCL% correct, higher is better 26 · 2 of 81 measured 23.9%bfcl fc 65.0%bfcl fc
UGI Leaderboard reported by UGI Leaderboard · 3 results
Writing score · UGIscore out of 100, higher is better 80 · 23 of 230 measured 49.0 66.9no reasoning
Requested-length error · UGI% off the requested word count, lower is better 69 · 15 of 230 measured 15.0% 5.0%no reasoning
Style adherence · UGIscore from 0 to 1, higher is better 64 · 8 of 230 measured 0.36 0.41thinking reasoning
Show all 25 results (13 more)
MeasureQwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507Claude Sonnet 4.5
Arena (formerly LMArena) reported by Arena (formerly LMArena) · 4 results
Creative writing · TextArena rating, higher is better 122 · 27 of 385 measured 1,378 1,454
Expert prompts · TextArena rating, higher is better 103 · 43 of 338 measured 1,447 1,498high-32k reasoning
Instruction following · TextArena rating, higher is better 104 · 38 of 387 measured 1,414 1,464high-32k reasoning
Writing, literature and language · TextArena rating, higher is better 115 · 38 of 386 measured 1,396 1,454
Artificial Analysis reported by Artificial Analysis · 4 results
IFBench% of instructions, higher is better 113 · 85 of 195 measured 46.1% 57.3%thinking reasoning
Long-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions, higher is better 177 · 96 of 233 measured 33.9% 72.3%thinking reasoning
Terminal-Bench Hard% of tasks, higher is better 110 · 47 of 190 measured 15.2% 35.6%thinking reasoning
τ²-bench telecom% of tasks, higher is better 127 · 73 of 193 measured 33.3% 78.1%thinking reasoning
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4 reported by Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) V4 · 5 results
Multi-turn tasks · BFCL% correct, higher is better 20 · 9 of 81 measured 45.4%bfcl fc 61.4%bfcl fc
Relevance detection · BFCL% correct, higher is better 8 · 63 of 81 measured 93.8%bfcl prompt 68.8%bfcl fc
Single-turn calls (curated) · BFCL% correct, higher is better 2 · 12 of 81 measured 90.3%bfcl prompt 88.7%bfcl fc
Single-turn calls (user-contributed) · BFCL% correct, higher is better 15 · 5 of 81 measured 78.7%bfcl prompt 81.1%bfcl fc
Web search · BFCL% correct, higher is better 20 · 6 of 81 measured 54.0%bfcl fc 81.0%bfcl fc

Quick answers

Is Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507 better than Claude Sonnet 4.5?

Pick Claude Sonnet 4.5 if quality matters most: it scores higher (Intelligence Index 20.7 against 12.0). Pick Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507 if cost matters more: it costs 20 times less per token.

Which is cheaper, Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507 or Claude Sonnet 4.5?

Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507 is cheaper: $0.30 against $6.00 per million tokens, 20 times less.

Which is better for agents and tool use, Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507 or Claude Sonnet 4.5?

Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507 ranks 51 of 164 models on sale for multi-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls, against 99 for Claude Sonnet 4.5.

Which is better for reasoning and knowledge, Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507 or Claude Sonnet 4.5?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 ranks 98 of 198 models on sale for hard questions across science, maths and general knowledge, against 129 for Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507.

Which is better for writing, Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507 or Claude Sonnet 4.5?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 ranks 34 of 188 models on sale for what people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality, against 85 for Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507.

Which is better for sticking to the facts, Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507 or Claude Sonnet 4.5?

Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507 ranks 98 of 152 models on sale for summarising without inventing things, and factual answers, against 101 for Claude Sonnet 4.5.

Which has the bigger context window, Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507 or Claude Sonnet 4.5?

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 1,000,000 tokens, against 262,144 for Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507.

Run Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507 and Claude Sonnet 4.5 on your own prompt

Benchmarks aren't your data. Try both side by side in the playground, with the cost of every answer.