Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 42.4 points higher (53.6 vs 11.2) but costs 6.6× as much to run the benchmark ($2172 vs $329; 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 11.2, and Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) when 11.2 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 53.6 | 11.2 | −79.1% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 79.1% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,172.43 | $328.86 | −84.9% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 84.9% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 33.81s | 43.21s | +27.8% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 27.8% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.14 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 79.1% less intelligence, 84.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 27.8% slower end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Qwen3.5 9B (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/qwen3-5-9b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-high/qwen3-5-9b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill