Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) vs Qwen3 Coder Next
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) by Anthropic or Qwen3 Coder Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-08-07.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max … scores 41.8 points higher (63.1 vs 21.3) but costs 15× as much to run the benchmark ($3836 vs $250; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max … when you need intelligence above 21.3, and Qwen3 Coder Next when 21.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) | Qwen3 Coder Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 63.1 | 21.3 | −66.2% Qwen3 Coder Next is 66.2% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $3,836.05 | $250.18 | −93.5% Qwen3 Coder Next is 93.5% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 65.95s | 5.28s | −92.0% Qwen3 Coder Next is 92.0% 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, Max Effort): 66.2% less intelligence, 93.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 92.0% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5 (max) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Qwen3 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-5.6 Luna (max) scores 52.30 for $172.
Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)Qwen3 Coder NextToday's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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