Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3.8 Max
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 Max 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)
Qwen3.8 Max vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): 5.0% less intelligence, 268.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 361.1% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) | Qwen3.8 Max | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 42.3 | 40.2 | −5.0% Qwen3.8 Max is 5.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $860.33 | $3,172.37 | +268.7% Qwen3.8 Max is 3.7× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 13.96s | 64.37s | +361.1% Qwen3.8 Max is 361.1% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| 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.
- Qwen3.8 Max is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)Qwen3.8 MaxToday's Pareto 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/qwen3-8-max-0803 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-low/qwen3-8-max-0803?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill