Compare / Qwen3.5-35B-A3B vs Claude Opus 4

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B vs Claude Opus 4

Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 11 results on 3 sources that measured both models.

AlibabaQwen3.5-35B-A3B Released 24 Feb 2026 · $0.16 in · $1.30 out
AnthropicClaude Opus 4 Released 22 May 2025 · Not on sale
Qwen3.5-35B-A3B wins 21 too close to callClaude Opus 4 wins 8

Of the 11 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.

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B or Claude Opus 4? The short answer

They score and cost about the same: pick on the results below that match your work.

  • Qwen3.5-35B-A3B is newer: released 24 Feb 2026, against 22 May 2025 for Claude Opus 4.
  • On third-party benchmarks, on the results both models have: Qwen3.5-35B-A3B does better for sticking to the facts; Claude Opus 4 for writing.

Head to head

Every fact side by side

Qwen3.5-35B-A3BClaude Opus 4
Price per million tokens$0.16 in · $1.30 outNot on sale
Blended (3 in : 1 out)$0.45–
Cheapest host, blended$0.25 (Darkbloom, FP4)–
Intelligence Index19.3–
Spring Prompt overall––
Output speed, tokens a second––
Context window262,144 tokens–
Released24 Feb 2026 (newer)22 May 2025
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 116 of 164 not measured
Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge 92 of 198 not measured
WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality 108 of 188 49 of 189
Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers 112 of 152 122 of 153

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.

MeasureQwen3.5-35B-A3BClaude Opus 4
Arena (formerly LMArena) reported by Arena (formerly LMArena) · 3 results
Overall · TextArena rating, higher is better 147 · 103 of 387 measured 1,394 1,426thinking-16k reasoning
Business, management and finance · TextArena rating, higher is better 139 · 126 of 380 measured 1,403 1,409thinking-16k reasoning
Creative writing · TextArena rating, higher is better 163 · 59 of 385 measured 1,342 1,432thinking-16k reasoning
UGI Leaderboard reported by UGI Leaderboard · 3 results
Writing score · UGIscore out of 100, higher is better 97 · 16 of 230 measured 42.6think-prefill reasoning 68.2no reasoning
Requested-length error · UGI% off the requested word count, lower is better 83 · 17 of 230 measured 17.0%no reasoning 6.0%no reasoning
Style adherence · UGIscore from 0 to 1, higher is better 151 · 60 of 230 measured 0.33no reasoning 0.36thinking reasoning
Vectara Hallucination Leaderboard reported by Vectara Hallucination Leaderboard · 2 results
Hallucination rate · Vectara% of summaries, lower is better 62 · 77 of 104 measured 10.5% 12.0%
Answer rate · Vectara% of documents, higher is better 31 · 99 of 104 measured 99.8% 91.0%
Show all 11 results (3 more)
MeasureQwen3.5-35B-A3BClaude Opus 4
Arena (formerly LMArena) reported by Arena (formerly LMArena) · 3 results
Expert prompts · TextArena rating, higher is better 134 · 102 of 338 measured 1,419 1,448thinking-16k reasoning
Instruction following · TextArena rating, higher is better 140 · 65 of 387 measured 1,386 1,444thinking-16k reasoning
Writing, literature and language · TextArena rating, higher is better 155 · 66 of 386 measured 1,363 1,431thinking-16k reasoning

Quick answers

Is Qwen3.5-35B-A3B better than Claude Opus 4?

They score and cost about the same: pick on the results below that match your work.

Which is better for writing, Qwen3.5-35B-A3B or Claude Opus 4?

Claude Opus 4 ranks 49 of 188 models on sale for what people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality, against 108 for Qwen3.5-35B-A3B.

Which is better for sticking to the facts, Qwen3.5-35B-A3B or Claude Opus 4?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B ranks 112 of 152 models on sale for summarising without inventing things, and factual answers, against 122 for Claude Opus 4.

Run Qwen3.5-35B-A3B and Claude Opus 4 on your own prompt

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