Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)

Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.

Trade-off

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

Intelligence: 53.40
Total cost: $13129

AlibabaQwen3.8 27B (Medium)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 27.60
Total cost: $1165

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 25.8 points higher (53.4 vs 27.6) but costs 11× as much to run the benchmark ($13129 vs $1165; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 27.6, and Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) when 27.6 is enough.

Metric	Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback)	Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	53.4	27.6	−48.3% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 48.3% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$13,128.86	$1,165.00	−91.1% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 91.1% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	224.26s	56.45s	−74.8% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 74.8% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$10.0 / $50.0	$0.50 / $3.00
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image, Video

Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) vs Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback): 48.3% less intelligence, 91.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 74.8% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback): what beats it Qwen3.8 27B (Medium): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 57.60 for $8708.
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 Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback)Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)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/qwen3-8-27b-medium · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1/qwen3-8-27b-medium?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill