Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Medium Effort) vs Qwen3 Coder Next
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Medium Effort) by Anthropic or Qwen3 Coder Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-08-19.
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Medi… scores 37.3 points higher (58.6 vs 21.3) but costs 4.5× as much to run the benchmark ($1116 vs $250; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Medi… when you need intelligence above 21.3, and Qwen3 Coder Next when 21.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Medium Effort) | Qwen3 Coder Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 58.6 | 21.3 | −63.7% Qwen3 Coder Next is 63.7% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,116.24 | $250.18 | −77.6% Qwen3 Coder Next is 77.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 16.10s | 4.97s | −69.1% Qwen3 Coder Next is 69.1% 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, Medium Effort): 63.7% less intelligence, 77.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 69.1% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5 (medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Grok 4.6 (high) scores 60.90 for $1068.
- Qwen3 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-5.6 Luna (max) scores 52.30 for $172.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-medium/qwen3-coder-next · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-medium/qwen3-coder-next?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill