Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) vs Qwen3.8 Max
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 Max 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 Max scores 10.7 points higher (40.2 vs 29.5) but costs 92× as much to run the benchmark ($3172 vs $34.3; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 Max 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 Max | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 29.5 | 40.2 | +36.3% Qwen3.8 Max is 36.3% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $34.31 | $3,172.37 | +9146.2% Qwen3.8 Max is 92× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 11.45s | 61.90s | +440.6% Qwen3.8 Max is 440.6% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.10 / $0.50 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8 Max vs Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low): 36.3% more intelligence, 9146.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 440.6% 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 Max is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
Claude Haiku 5.5 (Low)Qwen3.8 MaxToday's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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