Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)
Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): 49.4% less intelligence, 33.1% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 635.8% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) | Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 42.3 | 21.4 | −49.4% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 49.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $860.33 | $1,145.36 | +33.1% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 33.1% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 15.14s | 111.40s | +635.8% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 635.8% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.60 / $3.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Today's Pareto frontier
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.
- Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)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-low/qwen3-6-27b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-low/qwen3-6-27b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill