Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-11-10.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallb… scores 36.3 points higher (56.4 vs 20.1) but costs 1.4× as much to run the benchmark ($3360 vs $2390; both flagship class). Pick Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallb… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh).
| Metric | Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 56.4 | 20.1 | −64.4% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 64.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $3,359.66 | $2,390.04 | −28.9% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 28.9% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 27.53s | 62.16s | +125.8% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 125.8% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $8.00 / $40.0 | $0.50 / $3.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) vs Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback): 64.4% less intelligence, 28.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 125.8% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 54.60 for $1124.
Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback)Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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