Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct vs Qwen3.5 Flash vs Claude Haiku 4.5
Qwen3.5 Flash comes out ahead, 80 to 66 and 60 on our weighted score, and it is the cheaper option too.
ByteDance SeedSeed-OSS-36B-Instruct
60/100- ECI—
- Price—
- Context524K
- Our pick
Alibaba (Qwen)Qwen3.5 Flash
80/100- ECI143.6
- Price$0.10 / $0.40
- Context1M
AnthropicClaude Haiku 4.5
66/100- ECI142.2
- Price$1.00 / $5.00
- Context200K
Qwen3.5 Flash is our pick
Qwen3.5 Flash is the better all-round choice, scoring 80/100 against Claude Haiku 4.5 (66) and Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct (60). It leads on capability and context window. The score weighs capability 67%, inputs & features 20%, context window 13%. Capability uses the average of shared benchmarks (GPQA Diamond and OTIS Mock AIME 2024–2025), because Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct has no Capabilities Index score yet.
- CapabilityQwen3.5 FlashShared benchmarks: Qwen3.5 Flash 83.4% · Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct 69.5% · Claude Haiku 4.5 68.9%
- Lowest priceQwen3.5 FlashQwen3.5 Flash $0.175 · Claude Haiku 4.5 $2.00 per 1M tokens (3:1 blend) · Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct unpriced
- Longest contextQwen3.5 FlashQwen3.5 Flash 1,000,000 · Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct 524,288 · Claude Haiku 4.5 200,000 tokens
- Widest inputsQwen3.5 Flash and Claude Haiku 4.5Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct: Text · Qwen3.5 Flash: Text, Images, Video · Claude Haiku 4.5: Text, Images, PDFs
- Self-hostingSeed-OSS-36B-InstructPublishes downloadable weights (Apache 2.0)
| Measure | Weight | Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct | Qwen3.5 Flash | Claude Haiku 4.5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CapabilityShared benchmarks | 67% | 70 | 83 | 69 |
| Inputs & features | 20% | 35 | 80 | 80 |
| Context window | 13% | 49 | 60 | 32 |
| Overall | 100% | 60/100 | 80/100 | 66/100 |
Left out because at least one model lacks the data: price. The remaining weights were rescaled.
Every spec in one table
Highlighted cells lead their row. Dashes mean the data is not published.
| Specification | Seed-OSS-36B-InstructByteDance Seed | Qwen3.5 FlashAlibaba (Qwen) | Claude Haiku 4.5Anthropic |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | |||
| Capabilities Index (ECI) | — | 143.6 (best) | 142.2 |
| ECI rank | — | #95 of 165 (best) | #102 of 165 |
| GPQA DiamondGraduate-level science questions | 71.5% | 82.3% (best) | 71.2% |
| FrontierMath Tiers 1–3Research-level mathematics | — | 18.3% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024–2025Competition mathematics | 67.5% | 84.4% (best) | 66.7% |
| SimpleQA VerifiedShort factual questions | — | 20.3% (best) | 13.2% |
| Price per million tokens | |||
| Input | — | $0.10 (best) | $1.00 |
| Output | — | $0.40 (best) | $5.00 |
| Cached input | — | $0.01 (best) | $0.10 |
| Blended (3:1) | — | $0.175 (best) | $2.00 |
| Long-context rate | — | Same rate | Same rate |
| Price source | — | Official Alibaba API | Official Anthropic API |
| Limits | |||
| Context window | 524,288 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens (best) | 200,000 tokens |
| Max output | 524,288 tokens (best) | 65,536 tokens | 64,000 tokens |
| Inputs and features | |||
| Text | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Images | No | Yes | Yes |
| PDFs | No | No | Yes |
| Audio | No | No | No |
| Video | No | Yes | No |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Tool calling | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Structured output | No | Yes | Yes |
| Availability | |||
| Weights | OpenApache 2.0 | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| API model ID | — | qwen3.5-flash | claude-haiku-4-5 |
| API providers | — | 9 | 48 (best) |
| Released | Aug 20, 2025 | Feb 23, 2026 | Oct 15, 2025 |
| Knowledge cutoff | Jul 2024 | — | Feb 28, 2025 |
What would a month cost?
Enter your expected volume in millions of tokens. List prices only; caching and batch discounts would lower these.
- Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct—
- Qwen3.5 Flash$1.80
- Claude Haiku 4.5$20.00
Which should you choose?
Which is better: Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct, Qwen3.5 Flash or Claude Haiku 4.5?
Qwen3.5 Flash is the better all-round choice, scoring 80/100 against Claude Haiku 4.5 (66) and Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct (60). It leads on capability and context window. The score weighs capability 67%, inputs & features 20%, context window 13%. Capability uses the average of shared benchmarks (GPQA Diamond and OTIS Mock AIME 2024–2025), because Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct has no Capabilities Index score yet.
Which is cheaper, Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct, Qwen3.5 Flash or Claude Haiku 4.5?
Qwen3.5 Flash is cheaper at $0.10 input / $0.40 output per million tokens (official Alibaba API price). Claude Haiku 4.5 costs $1.00 input / $5.00 output per million tokens (official Anthropic API price). At a typical mix of three input tokens to one output token, that is $0.175 per million tokens for Qwen3.5 Flash versus $2.00 for Claude Haiku 4.5 (11× as much). Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct has no published per-token price.
Which scores higher on benchmarks?
Not every model here has a Capabilities Index score, so we compare the average of shared benchmarks (GPQA Diamond and OTIS Mock AIME 2024–2025): Qwen3.5 Flash 83.4%, Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct 69.5% and Claude Haiku 4.5 68.9%. On individual benchmarks: GPQA Diamond — Qwen3.5 Flash 82.3%, Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct 71.5%, Claude Haiku 4.5 71.2%; OTIS Mock AIME 2024–2025 — Qwen3.5 Flash 84.4%, Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct 67.5%, Claude Haiku 4.5 66.7%.
Which is better for coding?
There are no published SWE-bench Verified results for Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct, Qwen3.5 Flash and Claude Haiku 4.5 yet, so there is no like-for-like coding score. On overall capability, Qwen3.5 Flash leads, which tends to carry over to coding, but test on your own codebase. All three support tool calling for agent workflows.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3.5 Flash has the largest context window at 1,000,000 tokens, against 524,288 for Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct and 200,000 for Claude Haiku 4.5. Maximum output per response: Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct up to 524,288, Qwen3.5 Flash up to 65,536, Claude Haiku 4.5 up to 64,000 tokens.
Which can read images, PDFs, audio or video?
Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct accepts text; Qwen3.5 Flash accepts text, images and video; Claude Haiku 4.5 accepts text, images and PDFs. Qwen3.5 Flash handles the widest range of inputs.
Are any of these open source?
Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct publishes its weights (Apache 2.0) and can be self-hosted; Qwen3.5 Flash and Claude Haiku 4.5 is proprietary.
Which is newer?
Qwen3.5 Flash is the newest, released Feb 23, 2026. Claude Haiku 4.5 came out Oct 15, 2025; Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct came out Aug 20, 2025. Knowledge cutoff: Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct Jul 2024, Claude Haiku 4.5 Feb 28, 2025.
How do you decide the winner?
Each model gets a 0–100 score on capability (50%, independent benchmark results); price (25%, blended price per million tokens (3 input : 1 output), log scale); inputs & features (15%, image, PDF, audio and video input, tool calling, structured output and reasoning); context window (10%, maximum tokens per request, log scale). Dimensions missing for any model are dropped and the remaining weights rescaled, so every model is judged on the same evidence. Specs and prices come from public model listings and the labs’ own API pages; capability scores come from independent benchmark runs. Data updated Nov 2, 2026.
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