Claude Opus 5 (Medium) vs Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Medium) by Anthropic or Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning) 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 (Medium) scores 29.2 points higher (44.8 vs 15.6) but costs 4.1× as much to run the benchmark ($2732 vs $661; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5 (Medium) when you need intelligence above 15.6, and Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning) when 15.6 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (Medium) | Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 44.8 | 15.6 | −65.2% Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Re… is 65.2% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,731.91 | $661.29 | −75.8% Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Re… is 75.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 12.98s | 21.22s | +63.5% Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Re… is 63.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $0.40 / $3.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 5 (Medium): 65.2% less intelligence, 75.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 63.5% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5 (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
- Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
Claude Opus 5 (Medium)Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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