Claude Fable 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Opus 4.8 Fallback) vs Qwen3 Coder Next
Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Opus 4.8 Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3 Coder Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-07-17.
Depends on your budget
Claude Fable 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max… scores 38.8 points higher (59.9 vs 21.1) but costs 23× as much to run the benchmark ($5631 vs $247; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max… when you need intelligence above 21.1, and Qwen3 Coder Next when 21.1 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Fable 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Opus 4.8 Fallback) | Qwen3 Coder Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 59.9 | 21.1 | −64.8% Qwen3 Coder Next is 64.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $5,630.52 | $247.26 | −95.6% Qwen3 Coder Next is 95.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 132.03s | 6.61s | −95.0% Qwen3 Coder Next is 95.0% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $10.0 / $50.0 | $0.35 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Not reported | Not reported |
Qwen3 Coder Next vs Claude Fable 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Opus 4.8 Fallback): 64.8% less intelligence, 95.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 95.0% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Fable 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Opus 4.8 Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Qwen3 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-5.6 Terra (medium) scores 45.60 for $240.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5/qwen3-coder-next · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5/qwen3-coder-next?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill