Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Low Effort) vs Qwen3 Coder Next
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Low Effort) by Anthropic or Qwen3 Coder Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-09-09.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Low … scores 29.7 points higher (39.8 vs 10.1) but costs 3.3× as much to run the benchmark ($1561 vs $476; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Low … when you need intelligence above 10.1, and Qwen3 Coder Next when 10.1 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Low Effort) | Qwen3 Coder Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 39.8 | 10.1 | −74.6% Qwen3 Coder Next is 74.6% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,560.91 | $476.03 | −69.5% Qwen3 Coder Next is 69.5% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 11.80s | 5.52s | −53.2% Qwen3 Coder Next is 53.2% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $0.35 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Not reported | Not reported |
Qwen3 Coder Next vs Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Low Effort): 74.6% less intelligence, 69.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 53.2% faster 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 Astra (low) scores 46.00 for $1537.
- Qwen3 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GLM-5.3-Flash scores 41.90 for $280.
Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Low Effort)Qwen3 Coder NextToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
Compare something else
Agents:
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-low/qwen3-coder-next · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-low/qwen3-coder-next?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill