Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) vs Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 Max (0902) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) scores 28.5 points higher (45.4 vs 16.9) but costs 8.3× as much to run the benchmark ($4935 vs $594; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 Max (0902) when you need intelligence above 16.9, and Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) when 16.9 is enough.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) | Qwen3.8 Max (0902) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 16.9 | 45.4 | +168.6% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 2.7× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $594.08 | $4,934.79 | +730.7% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 8.3× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 24.38s | 64.07s | +162.8% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 162.8% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $1.00 / $5.00 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) vs Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning): 168.6% more intelligence, 730.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 162.8% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning)Qwen3.8 Max (0902)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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