Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Depends on your budget
Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallb… scores 36.2 points higher (48.9 vs 12.7) but costs 17× as much to run the benchmark ($3983 vs $234; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallb… when you need intelligence above 12.7, and Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) when 12.7 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 48.9 | 12.7 | −74.0% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 74.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $3,983.28 | $233.56 | −94.1% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 94.1% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 22.52s | 22.73s | +0.9% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 0.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $10.0 / $50.0 | $0.23 / $2.30 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) vs Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback): 74.0% less intelligence, 94.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 0.9% slower end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
- Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1-medium/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct-2507-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1-medium/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct-2507-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill