Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) vs Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-27.
Depends on your budget
Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) scores 34.0 points higher (49.6 vs 15.6) but costs 17× as much to run the benchmark ($11161 vs $661; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) when you need intelligence above 15.6, and Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning) when 15.6 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) | Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 49.6 | 15.6 | −68.5% Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Re… is 68.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $11,160.86 | $661.29 | −94.1% Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Re… is 94.1% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 109.02s | 21.22s | −80.5% Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Re… is 80.5% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $10.0 / $50.0 | $0.40 / $3.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning) vs Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback): 68.5% less intelligence, 94.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 80.5% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 57.60 for $8708.
- Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5/qwen3-5-122b-a10b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5/qwen3-5-122b-a10b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill