# Claude Sonnet 5 vs Qwen3.6 Plus

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen3.6 Plus across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-qwen3-6-plus
- Last updated: September 29, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 10
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.7

## Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Sonnet 5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Qwen3.6 Plus only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Claude Sonnet 5 leads overall 66.72 to 54.44.
- The clearest category separation is in agentic, where the averages are 64.6 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 33.4 for Qwen3.6 Plus.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is HLE in Knowledge, with scores of 57.4% and 28.8%.
- Qwen3.6 Plus is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | Alibaba |
| Type | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Overall Score | 66.72 | 54.44 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 26 | 48 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $2.00 / $10.00 | Pricing unavailable / Pricing unavailable |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 64.6 (Supported · #13/117)
- Qwen3.6 Plus public-lane score: 33.4 (Supported · #72/117)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 3.0 | 14.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 80.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp | 84.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE w/ tools | 57.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | 81.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 74.5% | 53.2% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| ApprenticeBench | 16% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 61.6% | Coming soon |
| Claw-Eval | Coming soon | 58.8% | Coming soon |
| QwenClawBench | Coming soon | 57.2% | Coming soon |
| τ³-bench results | Coming soon | 70.7% | Coming soon |
| VITA-Bench | Coming soon | 44.3% | Coming soon |
| DeepPlanning | Coming soon | 41.5% | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon | Coming soon | 39.8% | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | Coming soon | 48.2% | Coming soon |
| MCP-Tasks | Coming soon | 74.1% | Coming soon |
| WideResearch | Coming soon | 74.3% | Coming soon |
| Gert Labs | Coming soon | 50.60% | Coming soon |
| ResearchClawBench | Coming soon | 18.0% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 60 (Supported · #20/143)
- Qwen3.6 Plus public-lane score: 42.5 (Supported · #57/143)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 85.2% | 78.8% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE-bench Pro | 63.2% | 56.6% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE Multilingual | 78.3% | 73.8% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE Multimodal | 28.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 80.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 42.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| cursorBench32 | 61.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| VulcanBench CII v1 | 89.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 82.4% | 86.0% | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 79.6% | 73.4% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| cursorBench40 | 34.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench v6 | Coming soon | 87.1% | Coming soon |
| Vibe Code Bench | Coming soon | 25.56% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 78.7 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Qwen3.6 Plus public-lane score: 61.3 (Unranked · 4 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AI-Needle | Coming soon | 68.3% | Coming soon |
| LongBench v2 | Coming soon | 62% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 78.4 (#15/50)
- Qwen3.6 Plus public-lane score: 67.2 (#24/50)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| CharXiv | 88.3% | 81.5% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 77% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMMU | Coming soon | 86.0% | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 78.8% | Coming soon |
| MathVision | Coming soon | 88.0% | Coming soon |
| VideoMMMU | Coming soon | 84.0% | Coming soon |
| ScreenSpot Pro | Coming soon | 68.2% | Coming soon |
| V* | Coming soon | 96.9% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 64.2 (Supported · #27/169)
- Qwen3.6 Plus public-lane score: 52.1 (Supported · #58/169)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| HLE | 57.4% | 28.8% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| HLE w/o tools | 43.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE-Verified | 31.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LABBench2 | 80.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 88.9% | 87.4% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 87.5% | 87.7% | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| GPQA | Coming soon | 90.4% | Coming soon |
| SuperGPQA | Coming soon | 71.6% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro | Coming soon | 88.5% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Redux | Coming soon | 94.5% | Coming soon |
| C-Eval | Coming soon | 93.3% | Coming soon |

### Multilingual

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.6 Plus public-lane score: 69.7 (#4/12)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMLU-ProX | Coming soon | 84.7% | Coming soon |
| NOVA-63 | Coming soon | 57.9% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.6 Plus public-lane score: 82.5 (#50/124)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFEval | Coming soon | 94.3% | Coming soon |
| IFBench | Coming soon | 75.8% | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.6 Plus public-lane score: 62 (#5/7)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME26 | Coming soon | 95.3% | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2025 | Coming soon | 96.7% | Coming soon |
| HMMT Nov 2025 | Coming soon | 94.6% | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | Coming soon | 87.8% | Coming soon |
| MMAnswerBench | Coming soon | 83.8% | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3) | Coming soon | 26.207% | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) | Coming soon | 8.333% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3.6 Plus?

Claude Sonnet 5 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen3.6 Plus?

The widest category gap is in agentic, where the averages are 64.6 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 33.4 for Qwen3.6 Plus.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Sonnet 5 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Sonnet 5 currently has 26 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Qwen3.6 Plus cover on BenchLM?

Qwen3.6 Plus currently has 48 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-gpt-6-astra)
- [Qwen3.6 Plus vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gpt-6-astra-vs-qwen3-6-plus)
- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-claude-sonnet-5)
- [Qwen3.6 Plus vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-qwen3-6-plus)

## Explore More

- [Claude Sonnet 5 profile](/models/claude-sonnet-5)
- [Qwen3.6 Plus profile](/models/qwen3-6-plus)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)