Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-27.
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 40.9 points higher (53.6 vs 12.7) but costs 9.3× as much to run the benchmark ($2172 vs $234; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 12.7, and Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) when 12.7 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 53.6 | 12.7 | −76.3% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 76.3% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,172.43 | $233.56 | −89.2% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 89.2% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 40.99s | 22.73s | −44.5% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 44.5% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.23 / $2.30 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 76.3% less intelligence, 89.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 44.5% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-high/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct-2507-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-high/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct-2507-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill