Claude Fable 5.2 (Max, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)

Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.2 (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 2026-11-10.

Trade-off
AnthropicClaude Fable 5.2 (Max, Default Fallback)On the frontier
Intelligence
64.60
Total cost
$22191
AlibabaQwen3.8 27B (Medium)Off the frontier
Intelligence
17.50
Total cost
$1636
Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5.2 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 47.1 points higher (64.6 vs 17.5) but costs 14× as much to run the benchmark ($22191 vs $1636; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5.2 (Max, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 17.5, and Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) when 17.5 is enough.

MetricClaude Fable 5.2 (Max, Default Fallback)Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)64.617.5−72.9% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 72.9% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)$22,191.42$1,636.35−92.6% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 92.6% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)258.66s58.40s−77.4% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 77.4% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)$8.00 / $40.0$0.50 / $3.00
Input modalitiesText, ImageText, Image, Video

Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) vs Claude Fable 5.2 (Max, Default Fallback): 72.9% less intelligence, 92.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 77.4% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive pickerClaude Fable 5.2 (Max, Default Fallback): what beats itQwen3.8 27B (Medium): what beats it
Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

0204060$10$20$50$100$200$500$1k$2k$5k$10k$20kCost to run the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (USD, log scale)Intelligence IndexAgnes 2.5 Pro Theta (Sapiens AI): intelligence 24.00, $397Beam 1.0 (Reflection): intelligence 17.70, $250Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) (Anthropic): intelligence 7.40, $541Claude Fable 5.1 (High, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 47.20, $6618Claude Fable 5.1 (Low, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 38.70, $3886Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 49.20, $13327Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 43.20, $4897Claude Fable 5.1 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 50.00, $10097Claude Fable 5.2 (Low, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 53.90, $2862Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) (Anthropic): intelligence 29.90, $121Claude Haiku 5.5 (Max) (Anthropic): intelligence 36.50, $339Claude Haiku 5.5 (Xhigh) (Anthropic): intelligence 34.60, $193Claude Opus 5 (Max) (Anthropic): intelligence 44.20, $9010Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 51.80, $2716Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 34.80, $980Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 59.10, $8910Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 48.20, $2031Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 41.50, $1268Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 25.60, $499Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 54.50, $7981Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 30.80, $679Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 49.90, $2903DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 (Max) (DeepSeek): intelligence 23.10, $1402DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 (Non-reasoning) (DeepSeek): intelligence 12.60, $771DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (High) (DeepSeek): intelligence 28.60, $384DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Max) (DeepSeek): intelligence 32.60, $521DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Non-reasoning) (DeepSeek): intelligence 18.50, $310Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite (Google): intelligence 6.20, $224Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (Google): intelligence 11.70, $654Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) (Google): intelligence 30.80, $5764Gemini 3.8 Flash (Medium) (Google): intelligence 30.10, $4547Gemini 4 Argon (High) (Google): intelligence 50.40, $7620Gemini 4 Carbon (High) (Google): intelligence 60.00, $8240Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) (Google): intelligence 54.20, $5725GLM-5.3 (Low) (Z AI): intelligence 23.10, $1219GLM-5.3 (Max) (Z AI): intelligence 31.70, $3496GLM-5.3-Flash (Z AI): intelligence 27.80, $378GPT-5.6 Luna (Max) (OpenAI): intelligence 23.80, $334GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) (OpenAI): intelligence 32.30, $3250GPT-6 Astra (Low) (OpenAI): intelligence 43.30, $1651GPT-6 Astra (Max) (OpenAI): intelligence 56.90, $5661GPT-6 Astra (Medium) (OpenAI): intelligence 51.60, $2638GPT-6 Astra (Xhigh) (OpenAI): intelligence 55.30, $3746GPT-6 Luna (Max) (OpenAI): intelligence 27.90, $136GPT-6 Luna (Non-reasoning) (OpenAI): intelligence 9.40, $53.1GPT-6 Luna (Xhigh) (OpenAI): intelligence 23.50, $85.7GPT-6 Sol (Max) (OpenAI): intelligence 44.20, $1930GPT-6.1 Sol (Low) (OpenAI): intelligence 34.80, $238GPT-6.1 Terra (Low) (OpenAI): intelligence 29.40, $111GPT-6.1 Terra (Max) (OpenAI): intelligence 51.30, $972GPT-6.1 Terra (Non-reasoning) (OpenAI): intelligence 30.50, $213GPT-6.1 Terra (Xhigh) (OpenAI): intelligence 45.30, $400gpt-oss-120b (High) (OpenAI): intelligence 3.80, $265Granite 4.2 8B (IBM): intelligence 5.10, $46.9Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) (SpaceXAI): intelligence 31.00, $3391Grok 4.7 (High) (SpaceXAI): intelligence 35.20, $4722Grok 4.7 (Low) (SpaceXAI): intelligence 31.10, $2169Grok 4.7 (Xhigh) (SpaceXAI): intelligence 35.50, $5906Inkling (Xhigh) (Thinking Machines): intelligence 12.50, $1237Inkling 2 Small (Thinking Machines): intelligence 30.60, $792Inkling Small (Thinking Machines): intelligence 12.90, $225Kimi K3 (Low) (Kimi): intelligence 17.40, $1764Kimi K3.1 Pro (Kimi): intelligence 46.50, $3153Ling 3.1 Flash 1019 (InclusionAI): intelligence 29.60, $2009MiMo-V2.6-Flash (Xiaomi): intelligence 26.70, $106MiMo-V2.6-Pro (Xiaomi): intelligence 29.90, $221MiniMax-M3 (MiniMax): intelligence 18.90, $878MiniMax-M3.1-Flash (MiniMax): intelligence 29.10, $358Mistral Large 4 (High) (Mistral): intelligence 26.10, $1360Mistral Large 4 (Medium) (Mistral): intelligence 23.10, $936Mistral Large 4 Preview (Mistral): intelligence 25.30, $2923Mistral Medium 3.5 (Mistral): intelligence 4.60, $1103Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) (Mistral): intelligence 4.30, $43.4Muse Glimmer (High) (Meta): intelligence 6.30, $191Muse Spark 1.3 (Max) (Meta): intelligence 36.60, $1906Muse Spark Open (Xhigh) (Meta): intelligence 24.90, $1697Muse Wonder (High) (Meta): intelligence 40.50, $3520Muse Wonder (Max) (Meta): intelligence 43.60, $5414Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) (NVIDIA): intelligence 11.80, $1542Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (NVIDIA): intelligence 5.50, $246Nemotron 3.5 Super VL (NVIDIA): intelligence 13.60, $447Qwen3.8 27B (Low) (Alibaba): intelligence 15.70, $1460Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning) (Alibaba): intelligence 10.00, $2642Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) (Alibaba): intelligence 20.10, $2390Qwen3.8 Max (0902) (Alibaba): intelligence 33.70, $6354Step 5 Preview (StepFun): intelligence 28.50, $1644Tencent Hy4 (Tencent): intelligence 34.60, $1021GPT-6 Luna (Low) (OpenAI): intelligence 9.70, $9.09GPT-6 Luna (Medium) (OpenAI): intelligence 18.50, $39.5Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) (Anthropic): intelligence 18.60, $39.6GPT-6 Luna (High) (OpenAI): intelligence 21.40, $62.6Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) (Anthropic): intelligence 24.60, $72.7Muse Ember (Xhigh) (Meta): intelligence 34.10, $95.7Muse Ember (Max) (Meta): intelligence 36.00, $117GPT-6.1 Terra (Medium) (OpenAI): intelligence 38.20, $190GPT-6.1 Terra (High) (OpenAI): intelligence 42.40, $267GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) (OpenAI): intelligence 46.30, $389GPT-6.1 Sol (High) (OpenAI): intelligence 50.30, $573GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) (OpenAI): intelligence 52.50, $718GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) (OpenAI): intelligence 54.60, $1124GPT-6 Astra (High) (OpenAI): intelligence 54.80, $3204Claude Fable 5.2 (Medium, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 56.40, $3360Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 57.40, $4766Gemini 4 Carbon (Medium) (Google): intelligence 58.30, $5903Claude Fable 5.2 (High, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 61.80, $7106Claude Fable 5.2 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 62.20, $11742Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) (Alibaba): intelligence 17.50, $1636Claude Fable 5.2 (Max, Default Fallback) (Anthropic): intelligence 64.60, $22191Claude Fable 5.2 (Max, Default Fallback)Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)GPT-6 Luna (Low)
Claude Fable 5.2 (Max, Default Fallback)Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup

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Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-2/qwen3-8-27b-medium · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-2/qwen3-8-27b-medium?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill