Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 26.0 points higher (53.6 vs 27.6) but costs 1.9× as much to run the benchmark ($2172 vs $1165; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.8 27B (Medium).
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 53.6 | 27.6 | −48.5% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 48.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,172.43 | $1,165.00 | −46.4% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 46.4% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 33.81s | 55.12s | +63.0% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 63.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.50 / $3.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 48.5% less intelligence, 46.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 63.0% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)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-5-5-high/qwen3-8-27b-medium · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-high/qwen3-8-27b-medium?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill