Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Qwen3 Coder Next
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Qwen3 Coder Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) scores 11.5 points higher (20.7 vs 9.2) but costs 3.7× as much to run the benchmark ($1501 vs $405; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) when you need intelligence above 9.2, and Qwen3 Coder Next when 9.2 is enough.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | Qwen3 Coder Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 9.2 | −55.6% Qwen3 Coder Next is 55.6% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $405.10 | −73.0% Qwen3 Coder Next is 73.0% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.84s | 6.44s | −69.1% Qwen3 Coder Next is 69.1% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.31 / $1.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Qwen3 Coder Next vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 55.6% less intelligence, 73.0% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 69.1% faster 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 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)Qwen3 Coder NextToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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