ANTHROPIC VS ALIBABA
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Qwen3.5 Plus
Qwen3.5 Plus is about 6.7x cheaper than Claude Sonnet 4.6 on a blended 3:1 input:output rate — the same 10K-in/2K-out request costs $0.0088 vs $0.06. Both models have the same 1,000,000-token context window.
Pricing verified
API pricing per 1M tokens
| Model | Input / 1M tokens | Output / 1M tokens | Blended (3:1 mix) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | $3.00 | $15.00 | $6.00 |
| Qwen3.5 Plus | $0.40 | $2.40 | $0.90 |
Rates from official Anthropic pricing and official Alibaba pricing, checked 2026-08-11.
What a real workload costs
Example: one request with 10,000 input tokens and 2,000 output tokens, then that request at 100,000 runs per month.
| Model | Per request (10K in / 2K out) | Per month (100K requests) | Monthly delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | $0.06 | $6,000 | +$5,120 |
| Qwen3.5 Plus | $0.0088 | $880 | — |
Model your own prompt sizes and volumes in the token cost analyzer, or check caching savings with the prompt caching calculator.
Specs side by side
| Spec | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Alibaba |
| Context window | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Model class | General text | General text |
| Tokenizer | Proprietary (counts estimated) | Proprietary (counts estimated) |
Count tokens for each model on its own page: Claude Sonnet 4.6 token counter and Qwen3.5 Plus token counter. All Anthropic models are on the Claude Token Counter. All Alibaba models are on the Qwen Token Counter.
FAQ
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Qwen3.5 Plus FAQ
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Qwen3.5 Plus?
Qwen3.5 Plus is cheaper. At rates checked 2026-08-11, Claude Sonnet 4.6 costs $3.00 input / $15.00 output per 1M tokens, while Qwen3.5 Plus costs $0.40 input / $2.40 output — about a 6.7x difference on a typical 3:1 input-heavy workload.
How much does a real request cost on Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Qwen3.5 Plus?
A request with 10,000 input tokens and 2,000 output tokens costs about $0.06 on Claude Sonnet 4.6 and $0.0088 on Qwen3.5 Plus. At 100,000 such requests per month that is $6,000 vs $880 — a difference of $5,120 per month.
Which has the bigger context window, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Qwen3.5 Plus?
They are equal: both support 1,000,000 tokens of context, roughly 750,000 English words shared between prompt and response.
Do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Qwen3.5 Plus count tokens the same way?
Not exactly. Claude Sonnet 4.6 uses a proprietary tokenizer (counts are estimates) and Qwen3.5 Plus uses a proprietary tokenizer (counts are estimates). The same prompt will tokenize differently, which shifts effective cost per word.