Claude Opus 4.6 vs Qwen3.8-Max

  • Claude Opus 4.6 rates higher on LMArena’s text leaderboard: 1502 against 1484.
  • Qwen3.8-Max is cheaper: $2 / $6 per million input / output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.6.
  • On the 7 Vals AI benchmarks both have taken, Claude Opus 4.6 wins 2 and Qwen3.8-Max wins 5 (Claude Opus 4.6: MedCode, MMLU-Pro).
LMArena text rating over time
14701483149515081520Feb 26Apr 26Jun 26Aug 26Oct 26
LatestClaude Opus 4.6 1502Qwen3.8-Max 1484

Side by side

Models (2/6)
  • Claude Opus 4.6
  • Qwen3.8-Max
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Qwen3.8-Max
The model
LabAnthropicAlibaba
Released2026-02-042026-09-03
WeightsProprietaryProprietary
Context window1M1M
Input, per 1M tokens$5$2
Output, per 1M tokens$25$6
LMArena, people’s votes
LMArena TextMillions of people compare two anonymous models side by side and vote for the better answer1502#6 of 3511484#15 of 351
LMArena WebDevPeople ask two anonymous models to build the same web app, try both and vote for the better one1546#45 of 1241673#12 of 124
LMArena VisionSide-by-side votes on prompts that include an image1316#6 of 1461313#10 of 146
LMArena CodingLMArena’s text votes on prompts that ask for code1534#3 of 3461503#21 of 346
LMArena MathLMArena’s text votes on math prompts1518#7 of 3391501#15 of 339
LMArena Creative writingLMArena’s text votes on stories, poems and other creative writing1505#4 of 3491477#16 of 349
LMArena Hard promptsLMArena’s text votes on the hardest prompts1524#5 of 3511497#16 of 351
LMArena Instruction followingLMArena’s text votes on prompts with specific instructions to follow1521#3 of 3511481#18 of 351
Vals AI, overall
Vals IndexVals AI’s headline score—59.05%#11 of 27
Vals AI, coding
Terminal-Bench 4.0Frontier-difficulty tasks an agent completes in a real terminal—34.34%#18 of 55
SWE-benchReal GitHub issues from open-source projects78.20%#30 of 8585.60%#16 of 85
Vibe Code BenchBuilding complete web apps from a plain-language brief, graded on whether the app works53.50%#57 of 11564.70%#49 of 115
Code MigrationRewriting working programs in a new language, graded on whether the new program still passes its tests—57.19%#10 of 28
LiveCodeBenchFresh competitive programming problems, collected after models’ training cut-offs to avoid contamination84.68%#38 of 14387.85%#10 of 143
Vals AI, finance
Finance AgentThe core tasks of a financial analyst, done as an agent with research tools—58.83%#23 of 31
Finance IndexVals AI’s composite of finance tasks—61.66%#5 of 31
Tax Agent BenchAgentic research into US corporate tax questions—32.09%#22 of 76
Vals AI, law
Legal IndexVals AI’s composite of legal tasks—73.90%#5 of 28
Legal Research BenchAgentic US legal research—46.15%#17 of 85
Vals AI, medicine
MedCodeAssigning the right medical billing codes from clinical notes48.24%#30 of 10740.67%#62 of 107
MedQAMedical licensing exam questions, measured on accuracy and on robustness to bias95.41%#12 of 92—
Vals AI, reasoning
GPQA DiamondGraduate-level questions in biology, physics and chemistry that experts answer well and search does not89.65%#29 of 13893.69%#6 of 138
MMLU-ProHarder, reasoning-focused multiple choice across 14 subjects, from law to engineering89.11%#15 of 13888.60%#18 of 138
AIMEProblems from the American Invitational Mathematics Examination, a qualifier for the US Math Olympiad95.63%#9 of 96—
MMMUCollege-level questions that need both an image and text83.87%#29 of 9388.03%#12 of 93
Terminal-Bench ScienceExpert-written scientific research workflows, run by an agent in a terminal—12.86%#13 of 42

Add models in the compare tool.

Questions

Which is better, Claude Opus 4.6 or Qwen3.8-Max?

Claude Opus 4.6 rates higher on LMArena’s text leaderboard: 1502 against 1484. Qwen3.8-Max is cheaper: $2 / $6 per million input / output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.6. On the 7 Vals AI benchmarks both have taken, Claude Opus 4.6 wins 2 and Qwen3.8-Max wins 5 (Claude Opus 4.6: MedCode, MMLU-Pro).

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.6 or Qwen3.8-Max?

Qwen3.8-Max is cheaper: $2 / $6 per million input / output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.6.

Sources

Every number on this page comes from these sources; models without a published number show none. Download the data. Cite as “Nexus Explorer, nexus.inc/models”.