Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Low)
Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 27B (Low) 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 40.7 points higher (56.4 vs 15.7) but costs 2.3× as much to run the benchmark ($3360 vs $1460; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallb… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.8 27B (Low).
| Metric | Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Qwen3.8 27B (Low) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 56.4 | 15.7 | −72.2% Qwen3.8 27B (Low) is 72.2% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $3,359.66 | $1,460.07 | −56.5% Qwen3.8 27B (Low) is 56.5% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 27.53s | 57.78s | +109.9% Qwen3.8 27B (Low) is 109.9% 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 (Low) vs Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback): 72.2% less intelligence, 56.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 109.9% 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 (Low) 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 (Low)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-2-medium/qwen3-8-27b-low · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-2-medium/qwen3-8-27b-low?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill