Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, 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 2026-10-26.
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) scores 29.6 points higher (42.3 vs 12.7) but costs 3.7× as much to run the benchmark ($860 vs $234; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, 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 (Low, Default Fallback) | Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 42.3 | 12.7 | −70.0% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 70.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $860.33 | $233.56 | −72.9% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 72.9% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 16.52s | 22.73s | +37.6% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 37.6% slower |
| 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 (Low, Default Fallback): 70.0% less intelligence, 72.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 37.6% slower end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
- 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-low/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct-2507-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-low/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct-2507-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill