Compare / Qwen3 32B vs Claude Sonnet 5
Qwen3 32B vs Claude Sonnet 5
Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 18 results on 3 sources that measured both models.
Qwen3 32B or Claude Sonnet 5? The short answer
- Qwen3 32B is cheaper: $0.21 against $4.00 per million tokens, 20 times less.
- Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 38.2 against 8.6.
- On our business benchmarks, Qwen3 32B ranks higher for sticking to the facts.
- On our business benchmarks, Claude Sonnet 5 ranks higher for agents and tool use, reasoning and knowledge and writing.
At a glance
| Qwen3 32B | Claude Sonnet 5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Price per million tokens | $0.14 in · $0.40 out | $2.00 in · $10.00 out |
| Blended (3 in : 1 out) | $0.21 | $4.00 |
| Cheapest host, blended | $0.13 (DeepInfra, FP8) | $4.00 (Claude Platform on AWS) |
| Intelligence Index | 8.6 | 38.2 |
| Spring Prompt overall | – | – |
| Output speed, tokens a second | – | – |
| Context window | 131,072 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Weights | Open | Closed |
| Developer based in | China | the 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 models available today, for each kind of work, from our own benchmarks and licensed sources. The better rank is in green.
| Use case | Qwen3 32B | Claude Sonnet 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls | 111 of 161 | 33 of 161 |
| Professional workReal tasks from banking, consulting and law, business documents and freelance projects | not measured | 19 of 51 |
| Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge | 145 of 195 | 32 of 195 |
| WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality | 137 of 187 | 36 of 187 |
| Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers | 23 of 153 | 84 of 153 |
Every shared result
| Benchmark | Metric | Qwen3 32B | Claude Sonnet 5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arena (formerly LMArena)reported | Business, management and financeArena rating | 1,340 | 1,465 |
| Arena (formerly LMArena)reported | Creative writingArena rating | 1,304 | 1,435 |
| Arena (formerly LMArena)reported | Expert promptsArena rating | 1,398 | 1,512 |
| Arena (formerly LMArena)reported | Instruction followingArena rating | 1,331 | 1,467 |
| Arena (formerly LMArena)reported | OverallArena rating | 1,347 | 1,462 |
| Arena (formerly LMArena)reported | Writing, literature and languageArena rating | 1,308 | 1,452 |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Artificial Analysis Coding Indexindex score | 15.3 | 71.5 |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Artificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score | 8.60 | 38.2 |
| Artificial Analysisreported | GPQA Diamond% of questions | 66.8% | 91.1% |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Humanity's Last Exam% of questions | 7.4% | 41.3% |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Long-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions | 0.0% | 82.0% |
| Artificial Analysisreported | SciCode% of problems | 36.0% | 54.3% |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Terminal-Bench 2.1% of tasks | 5.2% | 80.5% |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Terminal-Bench 4.0% of tasks | 0.0% | 14.1% |
| Artificial Analysisreported | Τ-bench banking% of tasks | 5.4% | 37.3% |
| UGI Leaderboardreported | Requested-length error% off the requested word count | 19.0% | 3.0% |
| UGI Leaderboardreported | Style adherencescore from 0 to 1 | 0.32 | 0.38 |
| UGI Leaderboardreported | Writing scorescore out of 100 | 33.0 | 62.7 |
Bold green marks the better value on that metric. Where a source reports ranges that overlap, the difference may not be meaningful; see the benchmark page for ranges.
Quick answers
Is Qwen3 32B better than Claude Sonnet 5?
It depends on the task. Among models available today, on our benchmarks and licensed sources, Qwen3 32B ranks higher for sticking to the facts; Claude Sonnet 5 ranks higher for agents and tool use, reasoning and knowledge and writing.
Which is cheaper, Qwen3 32B or Claude Sonnet 5?
Qwen3 32B costs $0.21 per million tokens (three input to one output), against $4.00 for Claude Sonnet 5.
Run Qwen3 32B and Claude Sonnet 5 on your own prompt
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