Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) vs Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 4.6 (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 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) scores 8.7 points higher (30.1 vs 21.4) but costs 4.3× as much to run the benchmark ($4925 vs $1145; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) when you need intelligence above 21.4, and Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) when 21.4 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) | Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 30.1 | 21.4 | −28.9% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 28.9% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $4,924.80 | $1,145.36 | −76.7% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 76.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 148.96s | 111.41s | −25.2% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 25.2% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.60 / $3.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max): 28.9% less intelligence, 76.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 25.2% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 (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 Sonnet 4.6 (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-sonnet-4-6-adaptive/qwen3-6-27b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-4-6-adaptive/qwen3-6-27b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill