Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh) vs Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh) by Anthropic or Qwen3.6 35B A3B (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 (Xhigh) scores 31.5 points higher (49.7 vs 18.2) but costs 6.5× as much to run the benchmark ($5868 vs $896; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh) when you need intelligence above 18.2, and Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) when 18.2 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh) | Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 49.7 | 18.2 | −63.4% Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reas… is 63.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $5,867.76 | $896.39 | −84.7% Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reas… is 84.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 40.34s | 46.69s | +15.7% Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reas… is 15.7% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $0.38 / $2.25 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh): 63.4% less intelligence, 84.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 15.7% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Claude Opus 5 (Xhigh)Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning)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-xhigh/qwen3-6-35b-a3b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-xhigh/qwen3-6-35b-a3b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill