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Claude Sonnet 4 vs Qwen 2.5 Max: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

Qwen 2.5 Max is significantly cheaper at $0.16/$0.64 per million tokens vs $3.00/$15.00. Claude Sonnet 4 is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1305 vs 1250. Claude Sonnet 4 ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1280 vs 1260. Claude Sonnet 4 offers a larger 200K context window vs 128K.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureClaude Sonnet 4Qwen 2.5 Max
ProviderAnthropicAlibaba
Input Price / 1M tokens$3.00$0.160
Output Price / 1M tokens$15.00$0.640
Context Window200K128K
Max Output Tokens64,0008,192
Arena ELO1,2801,260
Coding ELO1,3051,250
TTFT (ms)320240
Tokens/sec7880
MultimodalYesNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionYesNo
When to Use Claude Sonnet 4

Choose Claude Sonnet 4 when you need: best-in-class coding performance, 200k context window, excellent instruction following. It excels at coding, analysis, long-context, agents tasks. Its 200K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

Strengths:

  • Best-in-class coding performance
  • 200K context window
  • Excellent instruction following

Best for:

codinganalysislong-contextagents
When to Use Qwen 2.5 Max

Choose Qwen 2.5 Max when you need: extremely competitive pricing, strong coding and general capabilities, open-source model available, good multilingual support including chinese. It excels at coding, general-purpose, cost-sensitive, open-source tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

Strengths:

  • Extremely competitive pricing
  • Strong coding and general capabilities
  • Open-source model available
  • Good multilingual support including Chinese

Best for:

codinggeneral-purposecost-sensitiveopen-source

Frequently Asked Questions

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