Claude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) vs Qwen3 Coder Next
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) by Anthropic or Qwen3 Coder Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-09-09.
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Ma… scores 31.9 points higher (42.0 vs 10.1) but costs 14× as much to run the benchmark ($6874 vs $476; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Ma… when you need intelligence above 10.1, and Qwen3 Coder Next when 10.1 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) | Qwen3 Coder Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 42.0 | 10.1 | −76.0% Qwen3 Coder Next is 76.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $6,873.86 | $476.03 | −93.1% Qwen3 Coder Next is 93.1% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 25.45s | 5.52s | −78.3% Qwen3 Coder Next is 78.3% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $0.35 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Not reported | Not reported |
Qwen3 Coder Next vs Claude Opus 4.8 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort): 76.0% less intelligence, 93.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 78.3% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 4.8 (max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Astra (max) scores 52.80 for $5324.
- Qwen3 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GLM-5.3-Flash scores 41.90 for $280.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-4-8/qwen3-coder-next · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-4-8/qwen3-coder-next?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill