Claude Fable 5.1 (Adaptive Reasoning, Medium Effort, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3 Coder Next
Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.1 (Adaptive Reasoning, Medium Effort, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3 Coder Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-09-09.
Depends on your budget
Claude Fable 5.1 (Adaptive Reasoning, M… scores 39.0 points higher (49.1 vs 10.1) but costs 8.4× as much to run the benchmark ($3983 vs $476; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5.1 (Adaptive Reasoning, M… when you need intelligence above 10.1, and Qwen3 Coder Next when 10.1 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Fable 5.1 (Adaptive Reasoning, Medium Effort, Default Fallback) | Qwen3 Coder Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 49.1 | 10.1 | −79.4% Qwen3 Coder Next is 79.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $3,983.28 | $476.03 | −88.0% Qwen3 Coder Next is 88.0% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 17.03s | 5.52s | −67.6% Qwen3 Coder Next is 67.6% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $10.0 / $50.0 | $0.35 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Not reported | Not reported |
Qwen3 Coder Next vs Claude Fable 5.1 (Adaptive Reasoning, Medium Effort, Default Fallback): 79.4% less intelligence, 88.0% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 67.6% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Fable 5.1 (medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Astra (xhigh) scores 52.50 for $3803.
- Qwen3 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GLM-5.3-Flash scores 41.90 for $280.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1-medium/qwen3-coder-next · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1-medium/qwen3-coder-next?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill