Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba… scores 35.6 points higher (51.2 vs 15.6) but costs 2.5× as much to run the benchmark ($1627 vs $661; both premium class). Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning).
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 51.2 | 15.6 | −69.5% Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Re… is 69.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,626.81 | $661.29 | −59.4% Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Re… is 59.4% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 25.34s | 21.37s | −15.7% Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Re… is 15.7% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.40 / $3.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 69.5% less intelligence, 59.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 15.7% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
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.
- Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Qwen3.5 122B A10B (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-medium/qwen3-5-122b-a10b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-medium/qwen3-5-122b-a10b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill