Claude Opus 5 (Low) vs Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Low) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 Max (0902) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) scores 6.0 points higher (45.4 vs 39.4) but costs 3.2× as much to run the benchmark ($4935 vs $1561; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 Max (0902) when you need intelligence above 39.4, and Claude Opus 5 (Low) when 39.4 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (Low) | Qwen3.8 Max (0902) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 39.4 | 45.4 | +15.2% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 15.2% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,560.91 | $4,934.79 | +216.1% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 3.2× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 11.45s | 62.92s | +449.5% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 449.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) vs Claude Opus 5 (Low): 15.2% more intelligence, 216.1% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 449.5% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
Claude Opus 5 (Low)Qwen3.8 Max (0902)Today's Pareto 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-low/qwen3-8-max · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-low/qwen3-8-max?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill