Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Qwen3 Instruct: which model should you choose?
We compared Claude Haiku 4.5 and Qwen3 Instruct on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Qwen3 Instruct has the stronger average benchmark score; Qwen3 Instruct is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Claude Haiku 4.5
Claude Haiku 4.5 is a multimodal model from Anthropic. It offers a 1,000,000-token context window, costs $13.86 per million input tokens and $74.67 per million output tokens, and averages 79.4 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $13.86 / 1M
- Output
- $74.67 / 1M
- Context
- 1,000,000
- Avg score
- 79.4
- Open weights
- No
Qwen3 Instruct
Qwen3 Instruct is a multimodal model from Alibaba Cloud. It offers a 1,000,000-token context window, costs $5.06 per million input tokens and $25.39 per million output tokens, and averages 79.8 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $5.06 / 1M
- Output
- $25.39 / 1M
- Context
- 1,000,000
- Avg score
- 79.8
- Open weights
- Yes
Specification comparison
| Spec | Claude Haiku 4.5 | Qwen3 Instruct | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $13.86 | $5.06 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $74.67 | $25.39 | B |
| Context window | 1,000,000 | 1,000,000 | Tie |
| Max output | 128,000 | 128,000 | Tie |
| Average score | 79.4 | 79.8 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1421.8 | 1419.2 | A |
| Open weights | No | Yes | B |
Benchmark comparison
Claude Haiku 4.5 wins 5, Qwen3 Instruct wins 6, and 1 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Claude Haiku 4.5 | Qwen3 Instruct | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 84.1 | 80.3 | 3.8 | Claude Haiku 4.5 |
| GPQA Diamond | 74.1 | 74.1 | 0.0 | Tie |
| SWE-bench Verified | 69.2 | 68.5 | 0.7 | Claude Haiku 4.5 |
| HumanEval | 84.7 | 85.1 | 0.4 | Qwen3 Instruct |
| MATH-500 | 81.4 | 86.1 | 4.7 | Qwen3 Instruct |
| AIME 2025 | 76.5 | 78.5 | 2.0 | Qwen3 Instruct |
| LiveCodeBench | 71.6 | 71.1 | 0.5 | Claude Haiku 4.5 |
| IFEval | 85.2 | 89.1 | 3.9 | Qwen3 Instruct |
| TruthfulQA | 79.6 | 79.7 | 0.1 | Qwen3 Instruct |
| HellaSwag | 89.6 | 87.0 | 2.6 | Claude Haiku 4.5 |
| MMMU | 77.6 | 78.7 | 1.1 | Qwen3 Instruct |
| Arena Elo | 1421.8 | 1419.2 | 2.6 | Claude Haiku 4.5 |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Claude Haiku 4.5 costs about $29.06 per million tokens and Qwen3 Instruct costs about $10.14. Qwen3 Instruct is roughly 65% cheaper than Claude Haiku 4.5. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Both models list a 1,000,000-token context window. That is enough for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Claude Haiku 4.5 wins 5, Qwen3 Instruct wins 6, and 1 are tied. On the index average, Qwen3 Instruct leads Claude Haiku 4.5 by 0.4 points (79.8 versus 79.4).
The price picture favours Qwen3 Instruct. The context picture is effectively a tie. Those two dimensions often matter more than a few benchmark points once a model is good enough for the task.
If you need a single default, start with Qwen3 Instruct for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.
Choose Claude Haiku 4.5 if
- You prefer Anthropic's tooling or already use it.
Choose Qwen3 Instruct if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- You need open weights for self-hosting or fine-tuning.
FAQ
Is Claude Haiku 4.5 better than Qwen3 Instruct?
On the index average, Qwen3 Instruct leads Claude Haiku 4.5 by 0.4 points (79.8 versus 79.4). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Claude Haiku 4.5 wins 5 benchmarks, Qwen3 Instruct wins 6.
Which is cheaper, Claude Haiku 4.5 or Qwen3 Instruct?
Qwen3 Instruct is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $10.14 per million tokens, versus $29.06 for Claude Haiku 4.5.
Which has the larger context window?
Both models list a 1,000,000-token context window.
Are these models open weights?
Claude Haiku 4.5 is proprietary; Qwen3 Instruct is open weights.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Qwen3 Instruct for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.