Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) vs Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) by Anthropic or Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) 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
Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) scores 23.4 points higher (41.8 vs 18.4) but costs 7.3× as much to run the benchmark ($6874 vs $941; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) when you need intelligence above 18.4, and Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) when 18.4 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) | Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 41.8 | 18.4 | −56.0% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 56.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $6,873.86 | $940.97 | −86.3% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 86.3% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 48.55s | 65.15s | +34.2% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 34.2% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $0.60 / $3.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 4.8 (Max): 56.0% less intelligence, 86.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 34.2% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Claude Opus 4.8 (Max)Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)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-opus-4-8/qwen3-5-397b-a17b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-4-8/qwen3-5-397b-a17b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill