Compare / Qwen3.5-397B-A17B vs Claude Sonnet 4.6
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B vs Claude Sonnet 4.6
Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 23 results on 4 sources that measured both models.
Of the 23 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.
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B or Claude Sonnet 4.6? The short answer
Pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 if quality matters most: it scores higher (Intelligence Index 30.1 against 21.4). Pick Qwen3.5-397B-A17B if cost matters more: it costs 4.7 times less per token.
- Qwen3.5-397B-A17B is cheaper: $1.29 against $6.00 per million tokens, 4.7 times less.
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 30.1 against 21.4.
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 is newer: released 17 Feb 2026, against 13 Feb 2026 for Qwen3.5-397B-A17B.
- On third-party benchmarks, on the results both models have: Claude Sonnet 4.6 does better for agents and tool use, professional work, reasoning and knowledge, writing and sticking to the facts.
Head to head
Every fact side by side
| Qwen3.5-397B-A17B | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | |
|---|---|---|
| Price per million tokens | $0.55 in · $3.50 out | $3.00 in · $15.00 out |
| Blended (3 in : 1 out) | $1.29 | $6.00 |
| Cheapest host, blended | $0.88 (Alibaba) | $6.00 (Amazon Bedrock) |
| Intelligence Index | 21.4 | 30.1 |
| Spring Prompt overall | – | – |
| Output speed, tokens a second | 90 | – |
| Context window | 262,144 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Released | 13 Feb 2026 | 17 Feb 2026 (newer) |
| 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 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.
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.
| Measure | Qwen3.5-397B-A17B | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents reported by APEX-Agents · 1 result | ||
| Tasks passed% of tasks, higher is better 36 · 28 of 37 measured | 24.9% | 43.0%high reasoning |
| Arena (formerly LMArena) reported by Arena (formerly LMArena) · 3 results | ||
| Overall · TextArena rating, higher is better 80 · 37 of 387 measured | 1,442 | 1,472 |
| Overall · Text factualityArena rating, higher is better 70 · 39 of 163 measured | 1,445 | 1,461 |
| Business, management and finance · TextArena rating, higher is better 73 · 19 of 380 measured | 1,446 | 1,482 |
| Artificial Analysis reported by Artificial Analysis · 3 results | ||
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score, higher is better 97 · 51 of 243 measured | 21.4no reasoning | 30.1max reasoning |
| GPQA Diamond% of questions, higher is better 53 · 61 of 231 measured | 89.3% | 87.5%max reasoning |
| Humanity's Last Exam% of questions, higher is better 77 · 65 of 242 measured | 29.0% | 33.6%max reasoning |
| UGI Leaderboard reported by UGI Leaderboard · 3 results | ||
| Writing score · UGIscore out of 100, higher is better 77 · 29 of 230 measured | 50.1no reasoning | 64.6high reasoning |
| Requested-length error · UGI% off the requested word count, lower is better 134 · 5 of 230 measured | 23.0%no reasoning | 2.0%low reasoning |
| Style adherence · UGIscore from 0 to 1, higher is better 164 · 5 of 230 measured | 0.33no reasoning | 0.41max reasoning |
Show all 23 results (13 more)
| Measure | Qwen3.5-397B-A17B | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| Arena (formerly LMArena) reported by Arena (formerly LMArena) · 4 results | ||
| Creative writing · TextArena rating, higher is better 86 · 31 of 385 measured | 1,405 | 1,449 |
| Expert prompts · TextArena rating, higher is better 67 · 28 of 338 measured | 1,477 | 1,506 |
| Instruction following · TextArena rating, higher is better 78 · 22 of 387 measured | 1,434 | 1,474 |
| Writing, literature and language · TextArena rating, higher is better 80 · 36 of 386 measured | 1,421 | 1,455 |
| Artificial Analysis reported by Artificial Analysis · 9 results | ||
| Terminal-Bench 2.1% of tasks, higher is better 61 · 36 of 130 measured | 51.3% | 71.2%max reasoning |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0% of tasks, higher is better 66 · 46 of 112 measured | 0.0% | 3.0%max reasoning |
| τ-bench banking% of tasks, higher is better 64 · 29 of 121 measured | 13.4% | 34.4%max reasoning |
| Artificial Analysis Coding Indexindex score, higher is better 61 · 36 of 131 measured | 48.2 | 63.0max reasoning |
| IFBench% of instructions, higher is better 8 · 87 of 195 measured | 78.8% | 56.6%max reasoning |
| Long-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions, higher is better 66 · 38 of 233 measured | 77.3% | 80.0%max reasoning |
| SciCode% of problems, higher is better 66 · 48 of 113 measured | 44.8% | 50.1%max reasoning |
| Terminal-Bench Hard% of tasks, higher is better 34 · 9 of 190 measured | 40.9% | 53.0%max reasoning |
| τ²-bench telecom% of tasks, higher is better 16 · 71 of 193 measured | 95.6% | 79.5%no reasoning |
Compare them with other models
Quick answers
Is Qwen3.5-397B-A17B better than Claude Sonnet 4.6?
Pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 if quality matters most: it scores higher (Intelligence Index 30.1 against 21.4). Pick Qwen3.5-397B-A17B if cost matters more: it costs 4.7 times less per token.
Which is cheaper, Qwen3.5-397B-A17B or Claude Sonnet 4.6?
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B is cheaper: $1.29 against $6.00 per million tokens, 4.7 times less.
Which is better for agents and tool use, Qwen3.5-397B-A17B or Claude Sonnet 4.6?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 ranks 54 of 164 models on sale for multi-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls, against 70 for Qwen3.5-397B-A17B.
Which is better for professional work, Qwen3.5-397B-A17B or Claude Sonnet 4.6?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 ranks 31 of 51 models on sale for real tasks from banking, consulting and law, business documents and freelance projects, against 48 for Qwen3.5-397B-A17B.
Which is better for reasoning and knowledge, Qwen3.5-397B-A17B or Claude Sonnet 4.6?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 ranks 58 of 198 models on sale for hard questions across science, maths and general knowledge, against 73 for Qwen3.5-397B-A17B.
Which is better for writing, Qwen3.5-397B-A17B or Claude Sonnet 4.6?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 ranks 31 of 188 models on sale for what people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality, against 69 for Qwen3.5-397B-A17B.
Which is better for sticking to the facts, Qwen3.5-397B-A17B or Claude Sonnet 4.6?
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B ranks 75 of 152 models on sale for summarising without inventing things, and factual answers, against 78 for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
Which has the bigger context window, Qwen3.5-397B-A17B or Claude Sonnet 4.6?
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 1,000,000 tokens, against 262,144 for Qwen3.5-397B-A17B.
Run Qwen3.5-397B-A17B and Claude Sonnet 4.6 on your own prompt
Benchmarks aren't your data. Try both side by side in the playground, with the cost of every answer.