Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, 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 (Medium, Default Fallba… scores 38.5 points higher (51.2 vs 12.7) but costs 7.0× as much to run the benchmark ($1627 vs $234; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba… when you need intelligence above 12.7, and Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) when 12.7 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 51.2 | 12.7 | −75.2% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 75.2% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,626.81 | $233.56 | −85.6% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 85.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 25.34s | 22.73s | −10.3% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 10.3% faster |
| 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 (Medium, Default Fallback): 75.2% less intelligence, 85.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 10.3% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- 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-medium/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct-2507-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-medium/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct-2507-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill