Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs DBRX Instruct

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

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 86 to 32. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude Sonnet 4.6's sharpest advantage is in knowledge, where it averages 81.3 against 73.7. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU, 99 to 73.7.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 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 DBRX Instruct. That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. Claude Sonnet 4.6 gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 32K for DBRX Instruct.

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. DBRX Instruct only becomes the better choice if you want the cheaper token bill.

Knowledge

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6

81.3

DBRX Instruct

73.7

99
MMLU
73.7
97
GPQA
-
95
SuperGPQA
-
93
OpenBookQA
-
83
MMLU-Pro
-
21
HLE
-

Coding

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Claude Sonnet 4.6

72

DBRX Instruct

70.1

93
HumanEval
70.1
69
SWE-bench Verified
-
54
LiveCodeBench
-

Mathematics

Claude Sonnet 4.6
99
AIME 2023
-
99
AIME 2024
-
98
AIME 2025
-
95
HMMT Feb 2023
-
97
HMMT Feb 2024
-
96
HMMT Feb 2025
-
96
BRUMO 2025
-
91
MATH-500
-

Reasoning

Claude Sonnet 4.6
95
SimpleQA
-
93
MuSR
-
88
BBH
-

Instruction Following

Claude Sonnet 4.6
91
IFEval
-

Multilingual

Claude Sonnet 4.6
91
MGSM
-

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or DBRX Instruct?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is ahead overall, 86 to 32. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU, where the scores are 99 and 73.7.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or DBRX Instruct?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 81.3 versus 73.7. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or DBRX Instruct?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 72 versus 70.1. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 9, 2026

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