Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)
Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 62.8% more intelligence, 11.0% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 179.7% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 33.7 | +62.8% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 62.8% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $1,336.09 | −11.0% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 11.0% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.71s | 60.72s | +179.7% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 179.7% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.50 / $3.00 | |
| 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.
- Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) 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)Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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