Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)
Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 3.4% more intelligence, 23.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 412.9% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 21.4 | +3.4% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 3.4% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $1,145.36 | −23.7% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 23.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.72s | 111.41s | +412.9% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 412.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.60 / $3.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
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.
- Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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