Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) scores 4.2 points higher (33.7 vs 29.5) but costs 43× as much to run the benchmark ($1459 vs $34.3; premium vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) when you need intelligence above 29.5, and Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) when 29.5 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) | Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 29.5 | 33.7 | +14.2% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 14.2% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $34.31 | $1,458.94 | +4152.2% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 43× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 11.45s | 61.13s | +433.9% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 433.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.10 / $0.50 | $0.50 / $3.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) vs Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low): 14.2% more intelligence, 4152.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 433.9% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Medium) scores 29.90 for $31.2.
- Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low)Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)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-haiku-5-5-low/qwen3-8-27b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-low/qwen3-8-27b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill