Seed 1.6 vs Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.

Seed 1.6 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 65 to 60. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Seed 1.6's sharpest advantage is in agentic, where it averages 62.3 against 55. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Verified, 46 to 36.

Seed 1.6 is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude 3.5 Sonnet is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. Seed 1.6 gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 200K for Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

Quick Verdict

Pick Seed 1.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude 3.5 Sonnet only becomes the better choice if you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Agentic

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

62.3

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

55

63
Terminal-Bench 2.0
54
67
BrowseComp
62
58
OSWorld-Verified
51

Coding

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

42.4

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

37.8

64
HumanEval
57
46
SWE-bench Verified
36
38
LiveCodeBench
39
46
SWE-bench Pro
37

Multimodal & Grounded

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

79.6

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

74.8

80
MMMU-Pro
77
79
OfficeQA Pro
72

Reasoning

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

74.5

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

67.7

69
SimpleQA
63
69
MuSR
61
86
BBH
83
77
LongBench v2
70
78
MRCRv2
70

Knowledge

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

56.4

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

50.8

73
MMLU
65
72
GPQA
65
70
SuperGPQA
63
68
OpenBookQA
61
75
MMLU-Pro
74
11
HLE
5
68
FrontierScience
59

Instruction Following

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

87

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

83

87
IFEval
83

Multilingual

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

83.4

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

80.5

88
MGSM
85
81
MMLU-ProX
78

Mathematics

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

75.9

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

71.2

72
AIME 2023
65
74
AIME 2024
67
73
AIME 2025
66
68
HMMT Feb 2023
61
70
HMMT Feb 2024
63
69
HMMT Feb 2025
62
71
BRUMO 2025
64
82
MATH-500
80

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Seed 1.6 or Claude 3.5 Sonnet?

Seed 1.6 is ahead overall, 65 to 60. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Verified, where the scores are 46 and 36.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Seed 1.6 or Claude 3.5 Sonnet?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 56.4 versus 50.8. Inside this category, FrontierScience is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Seed 1.6 or Claude 3.5 Sonnet?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 42.4 versus 37.8. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Seed 1.6 or Claude 3.5 Sonnet?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 75.9 versus 71.2. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Seed 1.6 or Claude 3.5 Sonnet?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 74.5 versus 67.7. Inside this category, MuSR is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Seed 1.6 or Claude 3.5 Sonnet?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 62.3 versus 55. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Seed 1.6 or Claude 3.5 Sonnet?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.6 versus 74.8. Inside this category, OfficeQA Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Seed 1.6 or Claude 3.5 Sonnet?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 87 versus 83. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Seed 1.6 or Claude 3.5 Sonnet?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 83.4 versus 80.5. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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