Claude Opus 5 (Max) vs Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Max) by Anthropic or Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) 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 (Max) scores 29.4 points higher (50.8 vs 21.4) but costs 6.4× as much to run the benchmark ($7275 vs $1145; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5 (Max) when you need intelligence above 21.4, and Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) when 21.4 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (Max) | Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 50.8 | 21.4 | −57.9% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 57.9% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $7,274.74 | $1,145.36 | −84.3% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 84.3% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 50.36s | 112.14s | +122.7% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 122.7% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $0.60 / $3.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) vs Claude Opus 5 (Max): 57.9% less intelligence, 84.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 122.7% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Opus 5 (Max)Qwen3.6 27B (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/qwen3-6-27b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5/qwen3-6-27b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill