Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) 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
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) scores 2.3 points higher (20.7 vs 18.4) but costs 1.6× as much to run the benchmark ($1501 vs $941; both premium class). Pick Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning).
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 18.4 | −11.1% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 11.1% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $940.97 | −37.3% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 37.3% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.71s | 65.10s | +199.9% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 199.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.60 / $3.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 11.1% less intelligence, 37.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 199.9% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-sonnet-thinking/qwen3-5-397b-a17b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-sonnet-thinking/qwen3-5-397b-a17b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill