Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)

Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback) 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.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 46.80
Total cost: $3158

AlibabaQwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 21.40
Total cost: $1145

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback) scores 25.4 points higher (46.8 vs 21.4) but costs 2.8× as much to run the benchmark ($3158 vs $1145; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning).

Metric	Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback)	Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	46.8	21.4	−54.3% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 54.3% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$3,157.66	$1,145.36	−63.7% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 63.7% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	11.25s	111.41s	+890.3% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 890.3% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$10.0 / $50.0	$0.60 / $3.60
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image, Video

Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) vs Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback): 54.3% less intelligence, 63.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 890.3% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback): what beats it Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
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 Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback)Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model

Matchup

Compare something else

Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1-low/qwen3-6-27b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1-low/qwen3-6-27b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill