Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) 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 (Xhigh, Default Fallbac… scores 28.4 points higher (56.0 vs 27.6) but costs 3.5× as much to run the benchmark ($4057 vs $1165; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallbac… when you need intelligence above 27.6, and Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) when 27.6 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) | Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 56.0 | 27.6 | −50.7% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 50.7% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $4,056.65 | $1,165.00 | −71.3% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 71.3% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 115.71s | 56.45s | −51.2% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 51.2% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.50 / $3.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback): 50.7% less intelligence, 71.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 51.2% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-xhigh/qwen3-8-27b-medium · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-xhigh/qwen3-8-27b-medium?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill