Claude Opus 4.6 vs Qwen3-235B-A22B
Benchmarks, API pricing and specs, head to head. Data updated 2026-06-10.
Anthropic · Jan 2026
The first Opus with a 1M-token context window at standard pricing, kicking off Anthropic's rapid 2026 release cadence.
Alibaba (Qwen) · Jul 2025
The most popular open general-purpose Qwen: 235B MoE with hybrid thinking, a staple of the 2025 open-source ecosystem.
The verdict
These two models don't yet share verified results on the benchmarks we track, so judge them on specs, pricing and intended use. On price the gap is dramatic: Qwen3-235B-A22B works out roughly 26x cheaper per blended million tokens. Claude Opus 4.6 also takes 1M of context versus 262K for Qwen3-235B-A22B. And Qwen3-235B-A22B is open-weights (Apache 2.0), so it can be self-hosted — a structural advantage if data control or vendor independence matters.
Specs & pricing
| Claude Opus 4.6 | Qwen3-235B-A22B | |
|---|---|---|
| modhub Index | — | 69.0 |
| Input price / 1M | $5 | $0.22 |
| Output price / 1M | $25 | $0.88 |
| Context window | 1M | 262K |
| Max output | 64K | 33K |
| Open weights | no | yes (Apache 2.0) |
| Reasoning model | yes | yes |
| Multimodal input | text, image | text |
| Knowledge cutoff | Aug 2025 | Apr 2025 |
| Released | Jan 2026 | Jul 2025 |
| Example monthly cost* | $87.50 | $3.52 |
* 10M input + 1.5M output tokens per month at list prices, no caching. Green = better value on that row.
Frequently asked questions
- Which is better, Claude Opus 4.6 or Qwen3-235B-A22B?
- These two models don't yet share verified results on the benchmarks we track, so judge them on specs, pricing and intended use. On price the gap is dramatic: Qwen3-235B-A22B works out roughly 26x cheaper per blended million tokens. Claude Opus 4.6 also takes 1M of context versus 262K for Qwen3-235B-A22B. And Qwen3-235B-A22B is open-weights (Apache 2.0), so it can be self-hosted — a structural advantage if data control or vendor independence matters.
- Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.6 or Qwen3-235B-A22B?
- Claude Opus 4.6 costs $5/$25 per million input/output tokens, while Qwen3-235B-A22B costs $0.22/$0.88. For a typical workload of 10M input and 1.5M output tokens per month, that's $87.50 versus $3.52.
- Which model is better for coding, Claude Opus 4.6 or Qwen3-235B-A22B?
- We don't yet track SWE-bench Verified results for both models; check their individual pages for coding-related scores.