Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)
Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 33.3% more intelligence, 22.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 164.5% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 27.6 | +33.3% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 33.3% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $1,165.00 | −22.4% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 22.4% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.84s | 55.12s | +164.5% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 164.5% 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 (Medium) 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 (Medium)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/qwen3-8-27b-medium · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-4-5-sonnet-thinking/qwen3-8-27b-medium?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill