Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 36.2 points higher (57.6 vs 21.4) but costs 7.6× as much to run the benchmark ($8708 vs $1145; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 21.4, and Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) when 21.4 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) | Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 57.6 | 21.4 | −62.8% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 62.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $8,708.20 | $1,145.36 | −86.8% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 86.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 626.13s | 112.14s | −82.1% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 82.1% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.60 / $3.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback): 62.8% less intelligence, 86.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 82.1% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) 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/qwen3-6-27b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5/qwen3-6-27b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill