Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Ornith-1.0-35B

Pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ornith-1.0-35B only becomes the better choice if you want the cheaper token bill or you need the larger 262K context window.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 82 to 67. 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 agentic, where it averages 65.1 against 64.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is Terminal-Bench 2.0, 59.1% to 64.2%.

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 Ornith-1.0-35B. That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. Ornith-1.0-35B is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude Sonnet 4.6 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. Ornith-1.0-35B gives you the larger context window at 262K, compared with 200K for Claude Sonnet 4.6.