Head-to-head comparison across 4benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Claude Sonnet 4.5
68
Qwen3.5-27B
66
Verified leaderboard positions: Claude Sonnet 4.5 unranked · Qwen3.5-27B #7
Pick Claude Sonnet 4.5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Qwen3.5-27B only becomes the better choice if reasoning is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.
Agentic
+3.7 difference
Coding
+4.8 difference
Reasoning
+47.0 difference
Knowledge
+2.8 difference
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Qwen3.5-27B
$3 / $15
$0 / $0
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
200K
262K
Pick Claude Sonnet 4.5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Qwen3.5-27B only becomes the better choice if reasoning is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the cleaner provisional overall profile here, landing at 68 versus 66. It is a real lead, but still close enough that category-level strengths matter more than the headline number.
Claude Sonnet 4.5's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 77.2 against 72.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is Terminal-Bench 2.0, 50% to 41.6%. Qwen3.5-27B does hit back in reasoning, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $3.00 input / $15.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.00 input / $0.00 output per 1M tokens for Qwen3.5-27B. That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. Qwen3.5-27B is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude Sonnet 4.5 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. Qwen3.5-27B gives you the larger context window at 262K, compared with 200K for Claude Sonnet 4.5.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 68 to 66. The biggest single separator in this matchup is Terminal-Bench 2.0, where the scores are 50% and 41.6%.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 83.4 versus 80.6. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 77.2 versus 72.4. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Qwen3.5-27B has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 60.6 versus 13.6. Claude Sonnet 4.5 stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 55.3 versus 51.6. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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