Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) vs Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8-Flash-Next 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-Flash-Next scores 5.3 points higher (39.8 vs 34.5) but costs 6.4× as much to run the benchmark ($363 vs $56.4; both mid-range class). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8-Flash-Next when you need intelligence above 34.5, and Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) when 34.5 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) | Qwen3.8-Flash-Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 34.5 | 39.8 | +15.4% Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is 15.4% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $56.36 | $362.72 | +543.6% Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is 6.4× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 14.67s | 50.47s | +244.0% Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is 244.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.10 / $0.50 | $0.15 / $0.47 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8-Flash-Next vs Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium): 15.4% more intelligence, 543.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 244.0% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium)Qwen3.8-Flash-NextToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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