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BenchLM

Model comparison

Claude Opus 4.8 vs Qwen3.6 Plus

Data verified

Head-to-head evidence from 31 shared benchmark results across 7 categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.

85/100
Margin
21.0pts
← winning
64/100
3 category wins2 category wins

Verified leaderboard positions: Claude Opus 4.8 #3; Qwen3.6 Plus #17

Evidence parity. Claude Opus 4.8 and Qwen3.6 Plus share 31 comparable benchmark results. 5 of 8 categories are comparable. 22 results are unique to Claude Opus 4.8; 30 to Qwen3.6 Plus.

Updated July 12, 2026
Shared results
31
Claude Opus 4.8 only
22
Qwen3.6 Plus only
30
Comparable categories
5 / 8

Pick Claude Opus 4.8 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Qwen3.6 Plus only becomes the better choice if mathematics is the priority.

Confidence note. This is a partial-evidence comparison with 31 shared benchmark results across 7 evidence categories; 5 of 8 categories currently have scoreable aggregates for both models. Treat the verdict as directional until coverage is more balanced.

Why this result

Claude Opus 4.8 is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 85 to 64. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude Opus 4.8's sharpest advantage is in agentic, where it averages 80.3 against 61.6. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HLE, 57.9% to 28.8%. Qwen3.6 Plus does hit back in mathematics, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Category breakdown

Exact category averages are shown below. Not measured means BenchLM does not have enough sourced public coverage for that model and category.

Category scores and score margins for Claude Opus 4.8 and Qwen3.6 Plus
CategoryClaude Opus 4.8ΔQwen3.6 Plus
AgenticClaude Opus 4.880.3Margin← 18.7Qwen3.6 Plus61.6
CodingClaude Opus 4.876.4Margin← 11.5Qwen3.6 Plus64.9
MathClaude Opus 4.853.9Margin→ 6.6Qwen3.6 Plus60.5
KnowledgeClaude Opus 4.862.7Margin← 5.2Qwen3.6 Plus57.5
MultimodalClaude Opus 4.877.0Margin→ 2.8Qwen3.6 Plus79.8
ReasoningClaude Opus 4.8Not measuredMarginNo overlapQwen3.6 Plus62.0
MultilingualClaude Opus 4.8Not measuredMarginNo overlapQwen3.6 Plus84.7
Inst. FollowingClaude Opus 4.8Not measuredMarginNo overlapQwen3.6 Plus82.3

Decisive benchmark drivers

The largest measured benchmark gaps in this matchup, with exact reported values.

More
A · Claude Opus 4.8B · Qwen3.6 Plus

  1. HLE

    Knowledge
    Source ↗
    A 57.9%B 28.8%
    Winner: Claude Opus 4.8Δ 29.1
    HLE: Claude Opus 4.8 scored 57.9%; Qwen3.6 Plus scored 28.8%. Claude Opus 4.8 wins this benchmark.

  2. FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4)

    Math
    Source ↗
    A 31.250%B 8.333%
    Winner: Claude Opus 4.8Δ 22.9
    FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4): Claude Opus 4.8 scored 31.250%; Qwen3.6 Plus scored 8.333%. Claude Opus 4.8 wins this benchmark.

  3. FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3)

    Math
    Source ↗
    A 47.241%B 26.207%
    Winner: Claude Opus 4.8Δ 21
    FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3): Claude Opus 4.8 scored 47.241%; Qwen3.6 Plus scored 26.207%. Claude Opus 4.8 wins this benchmark.

  4. Terminal-Bench 2.0

    Agentic
    Source ↗
    A 74.6%B 61.6%
    Winner: Claude Opus 4.8Δ 13
    Terminal-Bench 2.0: Claude Opus 4.8 scored 74.6%; Qwen3.6 Plus scored 61.6%. Claude Opus 4.8 wins this benchmark.

  5. SWE-bench Pro

    Coding
    Source ↗
    A 69.2%B 56.6%
    Winner: Claude Opus 4.8Δ 12.6
    SWE-bench Pro: Claude Opus 4.8 scored 69.2%; Qwen3.6 Plus scored 56.6%. Claude Opus 4.8 wins this benchmark.

Operational comparison

Runtime and commercial metrics are compared only when both models have a complete sourced value.

MetricClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3.6 PlusComparison
Input / output priceUSD per 1M tokensClaude Opus 4.8$5 input / $25 outputQwen3.6 PlusNot availableA complete price comparison is not available.
Generation speedtokens per secondClaude Opus 4.8Not availableQwen3.6 PlusNot availableA complete speed comparison is not available.
First-answer latencyseconds to first tokenClaude Opus 4.8Not availableQwen3.6 PlusNot availableA complete latency comparison is not available.
Context windowmaximum listed tokensClaude Opus 4.81MQwen3.6 Plus1MListed context windows are equal.

Benchmark Deep Dive

AgenticClaude Opus 4.8 wins
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3.6 PlusResult
Terminal-Bench 2.0Source 74.6%61.6%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
BrowseCompSource 84.3%—Not comparable
DeepSearchQASource 93.1%—Not comparable
OSWorld-VerifiedSource 83.4%—Not comparable
Finance Agent v2Source 53.9%—Not comparable
GDPval-AASource 16001135Claude Opus 4.8 leads
MCP AtlasSource 82.2%48.2%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
ToolathlonSource 59.9%39.8%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Gert LabsSource 72.97%50.60%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
AA Agentic IndexSource 47.2%27.6%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Tau2-TelecomSource 94.4%97.7%Qwen3.6 Plus leads
GDPval-AASource 55.0%31.8%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
ResearchClawBenchSource 21.1%18.0%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
OSWorld 2.0Source 20.6%—Not comparable
AA BriefcaseSource 1354—Not comparable
AA AutomationBenchSource 48.5%—Not comparable
AA EnterpriseOps-GymSource 44.0%—Not comparable
AA Harvey LABSource 7.5%—Not comparable
AA Tau3 BankingSource 27.6%—Not comparable
Claw-EvalSource —58.8%Not comparable
QwenClawBenchSource —57.2%Not comparable
TAU3-BenchSource —70.7%Not comparable
VITA-BenchSource —44.3%Not comparable
DeepPlanningSource —41.5%Not comparable
MCP-TasksSource —74.1%Not comparable
WideResearchSource —74.3%Not comparable
CodingClaude Opus 4.8 wins
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3.6 PlusResult
SWE-bench VerifiedSource 88.6%78.8%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
SWE-bench ProSource 69.2%56.6%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
SWE MultilingualSource 84.4%73.8%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
SWE MultimodalSource 38.4%—Not comparable
Terminal-Bench 2.0Source 74.6%—Not comparable
cursorBench31Source 58.4%—Not comparable
cursorBench32Source 62.3%—Not comparable
AA Coding IndexSource 74.3%54.5%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Terminal-Bench HardSource 58.3%43.9%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
AA-SciCodeSource 53.5%40.7%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
FrontierCodeSource 46.5%—Not comparable
AA Terminal-Bench 2.1Source 84.6%—Not comparable
LiveCodeBench v6Source —87.1%Not comparable
Vibe Code BenchSource —25.56%Not comparable
Reasoning
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3.6 PlusResult
AA-LCRSource 67.7%69.7%Qwen3.6 Plus leads
CritPtSource 20.9%2.9%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
AI-NeedleSource —68.3%Not comparable
LongBench v2Source —62%Not comparable
KnowledgeClaude Opus 4.8 wins
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3.6 PlusResult
GPQASource 93.6%90.4%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
GPQA-DSource 93.6%—Not comparable
HLESource 57.9%28.8%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
HLE w/o toolsSource 49.8%—Not comparable
Artificial Analysis Intelligence IndexSource 55.7%39.6%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
AA-GPQA DiamondSource 92.0%88.2%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
AA-HLESource 45.7%25.7%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
AA-Omniscience IndexSource 27.4%2.7%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
AA-Omniscience AccuracySource 46.6%26.2%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
AA-Omniscience Hallucination RateSource 35.9%32.0%Qwen3.6 Plus leads
SuperGPQASource —71.6%Not comparable
MMLU-ProSource —88.5%Not comparable
MMLU-ReduxSource —94.5%Not comparable
C-EvalSource —93.3%Not comparable
MathQwen3.6 Plus wins
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3.6 PlusResult
USAMO 2026Source 96.7%—Not comparable
FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3)Source 47.241%26.207%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4)Source 31.250%8.333%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
AIME26Source —95.3%Not comparable
HMMT Feb 2025Source —96.7%Not comparable
HMMT Nov 2025Source —94.6%Not comparable
HMMT Feb 2026Source —87.8%Not comparable
MMAnswerBenchSource —83.8%Not comparable
Multilingual
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3.6 PlusResult
INCLUDESource 87.6%—Not comparable
MMLU-ProXSource —84.7%Not comparable
NOVA-63Source —57.9%Not comparable
MultimodalQwen3.6 Plus wins
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3.6 PlusResult
OfficeQA ProSource 66.2%—Not comparable
ScreenSpot ProSource 87.9%68.2%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
CharXivSource 89.9%81.5%Claude Opus 4.8 leads
CharXiv w/o toolsSource 80.5%—Not comparable
Design Arena WebsiteSource 12811262Claude Opus 4.8 leads
MMMUSource —86.0%Not comparable
MMMU-ProSource —78.8%Not comparable
MathVisionSource —88.0%Not comparable
VideoMMMUSource —84.0%Not comparable
V*Source —96.9%Not comparable
AA-MMMU-ProSource —78.0%Not comparable
Inst. Following
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.8Qwen3.6 PlusResult
AA-IFBenchSource 62.2%75.2%Qwen3.6 Plus leads
IFEvalSource —94.3%Not comparable
IFBenchSource —75.8%Not comparable
Frequently Asked Questions (6)

Which is better, Claude Opus 4.8 or Qwen3.6 Plus?

Claude Opus 4.8 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 85 to 64. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HLE, where the scores are 57.9% and 28.8%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude Opus 4.8 or Qwen3.6 Plus?

Claude Opus 4.8 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 62.7 versus 57.5. Inside this category, HLE is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Claude Opus 4.8 or Qwen3.6 Plus?

Claude Opus 4.8 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 76.4 versus 64.9. Inside this category, AA Coding Index is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Claude Opus 4.8 or Qwen3.6 Plus?

Qwen3.6 Plus has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 60.5 versus 53.9. Inside this category, FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Claude Opus 4.8 or Qwen3.6 Plus?

Claude Opus 4.8 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 80.3 versus 61.6. Inside this category, GDPval-AA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Claude Opus 4.8 or Qwen3.6 Plus?

Qwen3.6 Plus has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.8 versus 77. Inside this category, ScreenSpot Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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