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 2026-09-22.
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Medi… scores 35.6 points higher (44.8 vs 9.2) but costs 5.7× as much to run the benchmark ($2732 vs $476; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Medi… when you need intelligence above 9.2, and Qwen3 Coder Next when 9.2 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Medium Effort) | Qwen3 Coder Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 44.8 | 9.2 | −79.5% Qwen3 Coder Next is 79.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,731.91 | $476.23 | −82.6% Qwen3 Coder Next is 82.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 13.51s | 6.95s | −48.6% Qwen3 Coder Next is 48.6% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $0.35 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Qwen3 Coder Next vs Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Medium Effort): 79.5% less intelligence, 82.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 48.6% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5 (medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Astra (medium) scores 49.60 for $2434.
- Qwen3 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
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