Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 Max (0902) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 15.3% less intelligence, 127.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 87.0% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Qwen3.8 Max (0902) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 53.6 | 45.4 | −15.3% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 15.3% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,172.43 | $4,934.79 | +127.2% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 2.3× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 33.81s | 63.23s | +87.0% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 87.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
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 Max (0902) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)Qwen3.8 Max (0902)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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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-max · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-high/qwen3-8-max?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill