Claude Opus 5 (Medium) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Low)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Medium) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 27B (Low) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5 (Medium) scores 18.6 points higher (44.8 vs 26.2) but costs 2.6× as much to run the benchmark ($2732 vs $1060; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Claude Opus 5 (Medium) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.8 27B (Low).
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (Medium) | Qwen3.8 27B (Low) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 44.8 | 26.2 | −41.5% Qwen3.8 27B (Low) is 41.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,731.91 | $1,060.08 | −61.2% Qwen3.8 27B (Low) is 61.2% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 13.14s | 54.35s | +313.6% Qwen3.8 27B (Low) is 313.6% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $0.50 / $3.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8 27B (Low) vs Claude Opus 5 (Medium): 41.5% less intelligence, 61.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 313.6% 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.
- Qwen3.8 27B (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Claude Opus 5 (Medium)Qwen3.8 27B (Low)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights 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-medium/qwen3-8-27b-low · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-medium/qwen3-8-27b-low?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill