# Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Qwen3.8 Max

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Qwen3.8 Max across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-sonnet-4-6-vs-qwen3-8-max
- Last updated: September 17, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 11
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick Qwen3.8 Max if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude Sonnet 4.6 only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Qwen3.8 Max leads overall 71.76 to 62.95.
- The clearest category separation is in instruction following, where the averages are 48.2 for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 90.7 for Qwen3.8 Max.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is JobBench in Agentic, with scores of 36.9% and 53.4%.
- Qwen3.8 Max is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.
- Qwen3.8 Max also has the larger context window at 1M.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.8 Max |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | Alibaba |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Non-Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 200K | 1M |
| Overall Score | 62.95 | 71.76 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 26 | 60 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $3.00 / $15.00 | Pricing unavailable / Pricing unavailable |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Qwen3.8 Max
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 43.9 (Supported · #93/153)
- Qwen3.8 Max public-lane score: 67.3 (Supported · #9/153)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.8 Max | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 59.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | 72.1% | 86.1% | Qwen3.8 Max |
| Claw-Eval | 67.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CyberGym | 65.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Gert Labs | 62.92% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 8.3% | 19.4% | Qwen3.8 Max |
| JobBench | 36.9% | 53.4% | Qwen3.8 Max |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 57.3% | 67.4% | Qwen3.8 Max |
| ApprenticeBench | 2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | Coming soon | 86.6% | Coming soon |
| CoWorkBench | Coming soon | 74.8% | Coming soon |
| skillsBench | Coming soon | 70.2% | Coming soon |
| Agents' Last Exam | Coming soon | 52.4% | Coming soon |
| AutomationBench | Coming soon | 27.3% | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon-Verified | Coming soon | 72.5% | Coming soon |
| WideResearch | Coming soon | 81.9% | Coming soon |
| HLE w/ tools | Coming soon | 56.2% | Coming soon |
| WebArena-Verified | Coming soon | 66.8% | Coming soon |
| AndroidWorld | Coming soon | 85.3% | Coming soon |
| MobileWorld | Coming soon | 77.8% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Qwen3.8 Max
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 52.3 (Supported · #48/152)
- Qwen3.8 Max public-lane score: 60.8 (Supported · #20/152)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.8 Max | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 79.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-Rebench | 60.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| React Native Evals | 80.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Vibe Code Bench | 51.48% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| cursorBench31 | 48.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 24.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 82.1% | 87.9% | Qwen3.8 Max |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 77.4% | 85.6% | Qwen3.8 Max |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | Coming soon | 86.6% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | Coming soon | 67.7% | Coming soon |
| DeepSWE | Coming soon | 56.6% | Coming soon |
| NL2Repo | Coming soon | 55.9% | Coming soon |
| FrontierSWE | Coming soon | 73.5% | Coming soon |
| MLS-Bench Lite | Coming soon | 41.0% | Coming soon |
| PaperBench | Coming soon | 93.0% | Coming soon |
| VulcanBench v3 | Coming soon | 81.2% | Coming soon |
| OpenHarmony Bench | Coming soon | 60.8% | Coming soon |
| FrontierSWE v2 | Coming soon | 15.8% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 54.1 (#33/48)
- Qwen3.8 Max public-lane score: 87.4 (#5/48)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.8 Max | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| CharXiv | 77.4% | 93.5% | Qwen3.8 Max |
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 82.3% | Coming soon |
| MathVision | Coming soon | 95.2% | Coming soon |
| MathVision w/ Python | Coming soon | 97.7% | Coming soon |
| BabyVision | Coming soon | 82.0% | Coming soon |
| BabyVision w/ Python | Coming soon | 91.3% | Coming soon |
| ZeroBench | Coming soon | 24.0% | Coming soon |
| ZeroBench w/ Python | Coming soon | 49.0% | Coming soon |
| MedXpertQA (MM) | Coming soon | 80.4% | Coming soon |
| ScreenSpot Pro | Coming soon | 84.5% | Coming soon |
| Vision2Web | Coming soon | 69.0% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | Coming soon | 88.4% | Coming soon |
| OmniDocBench 1.5 | Coming soon | 92.1% | Coming soon |
| OCRBench V2 | Coming soon | 74.2% | Coming soon |
| CC-OCR | Coming soon | 79.6% | Coming soon |
| RealWorldQA | Coming soon | 88.0% | Coming soon |
| ERQA | Coming soon | 77.8% | Coming soon |
| SimpleVQA | Coming soon | 75.0% | Coming soon |
| PerceptionBench | Coming soon | 63.5% | Coming soon |
| Video-MME (with subtitle) | Coming soon | 90.4% | Coming soon |
| VideoMMMU | Coming soon | 88.7% | Coming soon |
| MMVU | Coming soon | 82.4% | Coming soon |
| MLVU (M-Avg) | Coming soon | 90.8% | Coming soon |
| LVBench | Coming soon | 81.8% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 67.9 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Qwen3.8 Max public-lane score: 86.5 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.8 Max | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MRCRv2 | Coming soon | 92.9% | Coming soon |
| LongBench v2 | Coming soon | 66.3% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Qwen3.8 Max
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 55.8 (Supported · #51/183)
- Qwen3.8 Max public-lane score: 68.8 (Supported · #17/183)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.8 Max | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 89.9% | 92.6% | Qwen3.8 Max |
| SuperGPQA | 95% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro | 79.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE | 49% | 43.6% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 85.6% | 93.7% | Qwen3.8 Max |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 87.3% | 88.6% | Qwen3.8 Max |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 92.6% | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | Coming soon | 43.6% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 48.2 (#86/123)
- Qwen3.8 Max public-lane score: 90.7 (#18/123)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.8 Max | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | Coming soon | 82.8% | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 49 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Qwen3.8 Max public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.8 Max | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3) | 32.400% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) | 8.300% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Qwen3.8 Max?

Qwen3.8 Max is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Qwen3.8 Max?

The widest category gap is in instruction following, where the averages are 48.2 for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 90.7 for Qwen3.8 Max.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Sonnet 4.6 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 currently has 26 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Qwen3.8 Max cover on BenchLM?

Qwen3.8 Max currently has 60 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Qwen3.8 Max Preview](/compare/claude-sonnet-4-6-vs-qwen3-8-max-preview)
- [Qwen3.8 Max vs Qwen3.8 Max Preview](/compare/qwen3-8-max-vs-qwen3-8-max-preview)
- [Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-claude-sonnet-4-6)
- [Qwen3.8 Max vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-qwen3-8-max)

## Explore More

- [Claude Sonnet 4.6 profile](/models/claude-sonnet-4-6)
- [Qwen3.8 Max profile](/models/qwen3-8-max)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)