Compare / Qwen3-32B vs Claude Opus 4.5

Qwen3-32B vs Claude Opus 4.5

Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 26 results on 5 sources that measured both models.

AlibabaQwen3-32B Released 28 Apr 2025 · $0.14 in · $0.40 out
AnthropicClaude Opus 4.5 Released 24 Nov 2025 · $5.00 in · $25.00 out
Qwen3-32B wins 5Claude Opus 4.5 wins 21

Of the 26 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.

Qwen3-32B or Claude Opus 4.5? The short answer

Pick Claude Opus 4.5 if quality matters most: it scores higher (Intelligence Index 29.1 against 8.6). Pick Qwen3-32B if cost matters more: it costs 49 times less per token.

  • Qwen3-32B is cheaper: $0.21 against $10.00 per million tokens, 49 times less.
  • Claude Opus 4.5 scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 29.1 against 8.6.
  • Claude Opus 4.5 is newer: released 24 Nov 2025, against 28 Apr 2025 for Qwen3-32B.
  • On third-party benchmarks, on the results both models have: Qwen3-32B does better for sticking to the facts; Claude Opus 4.5 for agents and tool use, reasoning and knowledge and writing.

Head to head

8.6
Intelligence Index
29.1
$0.21
Price per million tokens, blendedlower is better
$10.00
131,072
Context window, tokens
200,000

Every fact side by side

Qwen3-32BClaude Opus 4.5
Price per million tokens$0.14 in · $0.40 out$5.00 in · $25.00 out
Blended (3 in : 1 out)$0.21$10.00
Cheapest host, blended$0.13 (DeepInfra, FP8)$10.00 (Amazon Bedrock)
Intelligence Index8.629.1
Spring Prompt overall––
Output speed, tokens a second––
Context window131,072 tokens200,000 tokens
Released28 Apr 202524 Nov 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 113 of 164 36 of 164
Professional workReal tasks from banking, consulting and law, business documents and freelance projects not measured 28 of 51
Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge 148 of 198 65 of 198
WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality 139 of 188 17 of 188
Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers 22 of 152 72 of 152

From our research

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.

MeasureQwen3-32BClaude Opus 4.5
Arena (formerly LMArena) reported by Arena (formerly LMArena) · 3 results
Overall · TextArena rating, higher is better 195 · 33 of 387 measured 1,347 1,474high-32k reasoning
Business, management and finance · TextArena rating, higher is better 203 · 31 of 380 measured 1,340 1,472
Creative writing · TextArena rating, higher is better 205 · 13 of 385 measured 1,304 1,470high-32k reasoning
Artificial Analysis reported by Artificial Analysis · 3 results
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score, higher is better 188 · 55 of 243 measured 8.6thinking reasoning 29.1thinking reasoning
GPQA Diamond% of questions, higher is better 167 · 69 of 231 measured 66.8%thinking reasoning 86.6%thinking reasoning
Humanity's Last Exam% of questions, higher is better 168 · 72 of 242 measured 7.4%thinking reasoning 30.1%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 24 · 1 of 81 measured 48.7%bfcl fc 77.5%bfcl fc
Irrelevance detection · BFCL% correct, higher is better 37 · 12 of 81 measured 82.4%bfcl prompt 90.8%bfcl prompt
Memory · BFCL% correct, higher is better 21 · 1 of 81 measured 26.7%bfcl fc 73.8%bfcl fc
UGI Leaderboard reported by UGI Leaderboard · 3 results
Writing score · UGIscore out of 100, higher is better 134 · 8 of 230 measured 33.0no reasoning 70.4no reasoning
Requested-length error · UGI% off the requested word count, lower is better 99 · 8 of 230 measured 19.0%no reasoning 3.0%no reasoning
Style adherence · UGIscore from 0 to 1, higher is better 175 · 20 of 230 measured 0.32no reasoning 0.39thinking reasoning
Vectara Hallucination Leaderboard reported by Vectara Hallucination Leaderboard · 2 results
Hallucination rate · Vectara% of summaries, lower is better 24 · 69 of 104 measured 5.9% 10.9%
Answer rate · Vectara% of documents, higher is better 17 · 71 of 104 measured 99.9% 98.7%
Show all 26 results (12 more)
MeasureQwen3-32BClaude Opus 4.5
Arena (formerly LMArena) reported by Arena (formerly LMArena) · 3 results
Expert prompts · TextArena rating, higher is better 159 · 33 of 338 measured 1,398 1,503high-32k reasoning
Instruction following · TextArena rating, higher is better 198 · 16 of 387 measured 1,331 1,483high-32k reasoning
Writing, literature and language · TextArena rating, higher is better 217 · 22 of 386 measured 1,308 1,467
Artificial Analysis reported by Artificial Analysis · 4 results
IFBench% of instructions, higher is better 155 · 84 of 195 measured 36.3%thinking reasoning 58.0%thinking reasoning
Long-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions, higher is better 222 · 66 of 233 measured 0.0%no reasoning 77.3%thinking reasoning
Terminal-Bench Hard% of tasks, higher is better 169 · 15 of 190 measured 3.0%thinking reasoning 47.0%thinking reasoning
τ²-bench telecom% of tasks, higher is better 135 · 44 of 193 measured 29.8%thinking reasoning 89.5%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 17 · 4 of 81 measured 47.9%bfcl fc 68.4%bfcl fc
Relevance detection · BFCL% correct, higher is better 8 · 63 of 81 measured 93.8%bfcl fc 68.8%bfcl prompt
Single-turn calls (curated) · BFCL% correct, higher is better 3 · 5 of 81 measured 90.3%bfcl prompt 89.7%bfcl prompt
Single-turn calls (user-contributed) · BFCL% correct, higher is better 3 · 11 of 81 measured 82.0%bfcl fc 79.8%bfcl fc
Web search · BFCL% correct, higher is better 28 · 1 of 81 measured 26.0%bfcl prompt 84.5%bfcl fc

Quick answers

Is Qwen3-32B better than Claude Opus 4.5?

Pick Claude Opus 4.5 if quality matters most: it scores higher (Intelligence Index 29.1 against 8.6). Pick Qwen3-32B if cost matters more: it costs 49 times less per token.

Which is cheaper, Qwen3-32B or Claude Opus 4.5?

Qwen3-32B is cheaper: $0.21 against $10.00 per million tokens, 49 times less.

Which is better for agents and tool use, Qwen3-32B or Claude Opus 4.5?

Claude Opus 4.5 ranks 36 of 164 models on sale for multi-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls, against 113 for Qwen3-32B.

Which is better for reasoning and knowledge, Qwen3-32B or Claude Opus 4.5?

Claude Opus 4.5 ranks 65 of 198 models on sale for hard questions across science, maths and general knowledge, against 148 for Qwen3-32B.

Which is better for writing, Qwen3-32B or Claude Opus 4.5?

Claude Opus 4.5 ranks 17 of 188 models on sale for what people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality, against 139 for Qwen3-32B.

Which is better for sticking to the facts, Qwen3-32B or Claude Opus 4.5?

Qwen3-32B ranks 22 of 152 models on sale for summarising without inventing things, and factual answers, against 72 for Claude Opus 4.5.

Which has the bigger context window, Qwen3-32B or Claude Opus 4.5?

Claude Opus 4.5: 200,000 tokens, against 131,072 for Qwen3-32B.

Run Qwen3-32B and Claude Opus 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.