Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) 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 17.5 points higher (51.2 vs 33.7) but costs 1.2× as much to run the benchmark ($1627 vs $1336; both premium class). Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh).
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 51.2 | 33.7 | −34.2% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 34.2% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,626.81 | $1,336.09 | −17.9% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 17.9% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 23.21s | 60.72s | +161.6% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 161.6% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.50 / $3.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 34.2% less intelligence, 17.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 161.6% slower 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.
- Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)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/qwen3-8-27b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-medium/qwen3-8-27b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill