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Model comparison

Claude Opus 4.5 vs Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

Updated July 31, 2026. Public scores include evidence status and uncertainty. They are not guarantees for a specific workload.

20 confirmed releases in the last 30 daystrack changes
Claude Opus 4.5

Anthropic

63.3/100

Supported · Public rank #39

90% interval 50.0–76.7

Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

Alibaba

59.3/100

Supported · Public rank #57

90% interval 40.4–78.2

Claude Opus 4.5 has the higher public score estimate, 63.33 versus 59.3, but the 90% score intervals overlap. Treat that as a lead, not a settled winner.

7 results are shared. Category rows based on different benchmark sets are marked directional and do not name a winner.

Which one for your work

Recommendations appear only when a shared evidence basis or an explicit operating constraint supports the call. Secondary and unsupported use cases stay disclosed below the initial list.

  • Long documents

    Prompts that approach the documented context limit

    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview) has the larger documented context window.

    Confidence: documented

Show secondary and unsupported calls
  • Coding work

    Code generation, repair, and software-engineering tasks

    Not enough matched evidence

    The category averages use different weighted benchmark sets, so they are directional rather than like-for-like.

    Confidence: limited

  • Agentic work

    Tool use, computer use, and multi-step task completion

    Not enough matched evidence

    The category averages use different weighted benchmark sets, so they are directional rather than like-for-like.

    Confidence: limited

  • Chat turn cost

    1K fresh input + 500 output tokens

    Not enough matched evidence

    A complete comparable API-rate estimate is not available for both models.

    Confidence: listed-rates

  • Cache-heavy agent loop cost

    200K cached + 20K fresh input + 10K output tokens

    Not enough matched evidence

    The page does not recommend a cost winner because at least one model cannot fit the stated workload in one request. Claude Opus 4.5 does not fit this workload in one request. Claude Opus 4.5 has no published cached-input rate, so cached tokens use its listed input rate. Qwen 3.6 Max (preview) has no comparable published API token rate.

    Confidence: rate-fallback

  • Repository review cost

    50K fresh input + 3K output tokens

    Not enough matched evidence

    A complete comparable API-rate estimate is not available for both models.

    Confidence: listed-rates

What is actually comparable

Shared results can support a head-to-head reading. Results present for only one model describe coverage, not superiority.

Shared results
7
Claude Opus 4.5 only
38
Qwen 3.6 Max (preview) only
2
Like-for-like categories
0 / 8

4 categories use different evidence sets. Those rows remain visible for coverage context but do not name a winner.

Category results, on a stated basis

Each row states whether both averages use the same weighted benchmark set. Directional and not-comparable rows remain visible, but they never receive a winner in this template.

Agentic

Directional only
Claude Opus 4.5
62.6
Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)
65.4
Weighted basis
2 vs 1 rows
Reading
Directional only

Coding

Directional only
Claude Opus 4.5
71.7
Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)
51.0
Weighted basis
2 vs 2 rows
Reading
Directional only

Knowledge

Directional only
Claude Opus 4.5
58.1
Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)
73.9
Weighted basis
4 vs 1 rows
Reading
Directional only

Math

Directional only
Claude Opus 4.5
57.5
Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)
18.4
Weighted basis
4 vs 2 rows
Reading
Directional only

Reasoning

Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.5
64.4
Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)
Not measured
Weighted basis
1 vs 0 rows
Reading
Not comparable

Multilingual

Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.5
85.7
Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)
Not measured
Weighted basis
1 vs 0 rows
Reading
Not comparable

Multimodal

Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.5
69.9
Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)
Not measured
Weighted basis
2 vs 0 rows
Reading
Not comparable

Instruction following

Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.5
69.5
Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)
Not measured
Weighted basis
2 vs 0 rows
Reading
Not comparable

Shape of the matched evidence

Only shared public evidence is shown. Sparse evidence stays a ruled list rather than being closed into a radar shape.

Too few matched category axes support a radar. The ruled list below shows only shared benchmark results; positions use each benchmark’s normalized display scale when available.

What each workload costs

Three fixed token mixes turn per-token rates into comparable decisions. Each scenario states context fit and whether cached input had to fall back to the published list-input rate.

Chat turn

1K fresh input + 500 output tokens

Claude Opus 4.5
$0.0175
Fits in one request
Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)
API rate not published
Fits in one request

Qwen 3.6 Max (preview) has no comparable published API token rate.

Repository review

50K fresh input + 3K output tokens

Claude Opus 4.5
$0.325
Fits in one request
Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)
API rate not published
Fits in one request

Qwen 3.6 Max (preview) has no comparable published API token rate.

Cache-heavy agent loop

200K cached + 20K fresh input + 10K output tokens

Claude Opus 4.5
$1.35
Does not fit in one request
Cached input priced at the published list-input rate
Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)
API rate not published
Fits in one request
Cached-input rate unavailable

Claude Opus 4.5 does not fit this workload in one request. Claude Opus 4.5 has no published cached-input rate, so cached tokens use its listed input rate. Qwen 3.6 Max (preview) has no comparable published API token rate.

Specification differences

Sourced differences are shown directly. Missing facts stay explicit instead of being inferred from a model name or family.

Context window

Maximum documented context; output-token limits may be lower.

Claude Opus 4.5

200K

Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

256K

API model ID

Claude Opus 4.5

Not sourced

Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

Not sourced

Cached-input rate

A missing cached-input rate falls back to the listed input rate only in the stated workload estimate.

Claude Opus 4.5

Not published

Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

No comparable hosted API rate

Documented inputs

Claude Opus 4.5

Not sourced

Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

Not sourced

Documented outputs

Claude Opus 4.5

Not sourced

Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

Not sourced

Provider availability

Claude Opus 4.5

Not sourced

Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

Not sourced

Reasoning profile

Claude Opus 4.5

Non-Reasoning

Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

Reasoning

Weight access

Claude Opus 4.5

Proprietary

Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

Proprietary

License

Claude Opus 4.5

Proprietary

Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

Proprietary

Release date

Claude Opus 4.5

2025-11-01

Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

2026-04-20

If you already use one of these models
Deployment change
The models list different providers, so authentication, endpoint behavior, limits, and feature support may change.
Quality signal
Claude Opus 4.5 has the higher public score estimate, 63.33 versus 59.3, but the 90% score intervals overlap.
Workload cost
A complete comparable API-rate estimate is not available for both models.
Context tradeoff
Qwen 3.6 Max (preview) has the larger documented window (256K).

Run the same representative tasks against both endpoints before changing production traffic.

Benchmark evidence

The full public result ledger is available for audit without forcing a wide desktop table onto a phone.

Browse raw public benchmark evidence47 rows

Agentic

  • Terminal-Bench 2.0

    Claude Opus 4.559.3%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)65.4%
    Source

    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview) leads this result

  • OSWorld-Verified

    Claude Opus 4.566.3%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • OSWorld

    Claude Opus 4.566.3%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • Claw-Eval

    Claude Opus 4.559.6%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • QwenClawBench

    Claude Opus 4.552.3%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)59.0%
    Source

    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview) leads this result

  • τ³-bench results

    Claude Opus 4.570.2%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • VITA-Bench

    Claude Opus 4.523.3%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • DeepPlanning

    Claude Opus 4.526.4%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • Toolathlon

    Claude Opus 4.543.5%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • MCP Atlas

    Claude Opus 4.542.3%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • MCP-Tasks

    Claude Opus 4.571.8%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • WideResearch

    Claude Opus 4.576.4%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • CyberGym

    Claude Opus 4.550.6%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • Gert Labs

    Claude Opus 4.564.23%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • JobBench

    Claude Opus 4.532.3%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

Coding

  • SWE-bench Verified

    Claude Opus 4.580.9%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • LiveCodeBench v6

    Claude Opus 4.584.8%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • SWE-bench Pro

    Claude Opus 4.557.1%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)57.3%
    Source

    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview) leads this result

  • SWE Multilingual

    Claude Opus 4.577.5%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • NL2Repo

    Claude Opus 4.543.2%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)42.9%
    Source

    Claude Opus 4.5 leads this result

  • SciCode

    Claude Opus 4.5
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)47%
    Source

    Not directly comparable

  • Terminal-Bench 2.0

    Claude Opus 4.5
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)65.4%
    Source

    Not directly comparable

Reasoning

  • LongBench v2

    Claude Opus 4.564.4%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • AI-Needle

    Claude Opus 4.574%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

Knowledge

  • GPQA

    Claude Opus 4.587%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • SuperGPQA

    Claude Opus 4.570.6%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)73.9%
    Source

    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview) leads this result

  • MMLU-Pro

    Claude Opus 4.589.5%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • MMLU-Redux

    Claude Opus 4.596.6%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • C-Eval

    Claude Opus 4.592.2%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • HLE

    Claude Opus 4.530.8%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

Math

  • AIME26

    Claude Opus 4.595.1%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • HMMT Feb 2025

    Claude Opus 4.592.9%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • HMMT Nov 2025

    Claude Opus 4.593.3%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • HMMT Feb 2026

    Claude Opus 4.585.3%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • MMAnswerBench

    Claude Opus 4.584.0%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3)

    Shared source
    Claude Opus 4.520.690%
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)23.103%

    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview) leads this result

  • FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4)

    Shared source
    Claude Opus 4.54.167%
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)4.167%

    Tie

Multilingual

  • MMLU-ProX

    Claude Opus 4.585.7%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • NOVA-63

    Claude Opus 4.556.7%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

Multimodal

  • MMMU-Pro

    Claude Opus 4.570.6%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • MathVision

    Claude Opus 4.574.3%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • CharXiv

    Claude Opus 4.568.5%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • VideoMMMU

    Claude Opus 4.584.4%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • ScreenSpot Pro

    Claude Opus 4.545.7%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • V*

    Claude Opus 4.567.0%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

Instruction following

  • IFEval

    Claude Opus 4.590.9%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

  • IFBench

    Claude Opus 4.558%
    Source
    Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)

    Not directly comparable

Frequently asked questions

Which is better, Claude Opus 4.5 or Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)?

Claude Opus 4.5 has the higher public score estimate, 63.33 versus 59.3, but the 90% score intervals overlap. The higher estimate is not a decisive winner because the uncertainty ranges overlap.

Which is better for coding, Claude Opus 4.5 or Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)?

The current coding averages use different weighted benchmark sets, so BenchLM does not name a winner from them. Read the shared benchmark rows directly and test the models on the same task set.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Claude Opus 4.5 or Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)?

The current agentic tasks averages use different weighted benchmark sets, so BenchLM does not name a winner from them. Read the shared benchmark rows directly and test the models on the same task set.

Which costs less, Claude Opus 4.5 or Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)?

Both models do not have comparable published API token rates, so this page does not name a universal price winner.

Which has the larger context window, Claude Opus 4.5 or Qwen 3.6 Max (preview)?

Qwen 3.6 Max (preview) has the larger documented context window: 256K, compared with 200K.

Related comparisons

Last updated July 31, 2026

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