Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) vs Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 Max (0902) 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 (0902) scores 10.9 points higher (45.4 vs 34.5) but costs 88× as much to run the benchmark ($4935 vs $56.4; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 Max (0902) 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 Max (0902) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 34.5 | 45.4 | +31.6% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 31.6% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $56.36 | $4,934.79 | +8655.8% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 88× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 13.12s | 64.07s | +388.3% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 388.3% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.10 / $0.50 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) vs Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium): 31.6% more intelligence, 8655.8% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 388.3% 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 Max (0902) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium)Qwen3.8 Max (0902)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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