Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Low)

Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 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 2026-10-26.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 49.60
Total cost: $11161

AlibabaQwen3.8 27B (Low)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 26.20
Total cost: $1060

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) scores 23.4 points higher (49.6 vs 26.2) but costs 11× as much to run the benchmark ($11161 vs $1060; 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 26.2, and Qwen3.8 27B (Low) when 26.2 is enough.

Metric	Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback)	Qwen3.8 27B (Low)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	49.6	26.2	−47.2% Qwen3.8 27B (Low) is 47.2% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$11,160.86	$1,060.08	−90.5% Qwen3.8 27B (Low) is 90.5% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	109.25s	55.56s	−49.1% Qwen3.8 27B (Low) is 49.1% 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 (Low) vs Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback): 47.2% less intelligence, 90.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 49.1% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback): what beats it Qwen3.8 27B (Low): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

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.
Qwen3.8 27B (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.

Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback)Qwen3.8 27B (Low)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/qwen3-8-27b-low · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5/qwen3-8-27b-low?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill