Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) 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 2.5 points higher (30.1 vs 27.6) but costs 4.2× as much to run the benchmark ($4925 vs $1165; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) when you need intelligence above 27.6, and Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) when 27.6 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) | Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 30.1 | 27.6 | −8.3% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 8.3% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $4,924.80 | $1,165.00 | −76.3% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 76.3% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 163.10s | 56.45s | −65.4% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 65.4% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.50 / $3.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) vs Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max): 8.3% less intelligence, 76.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 65.4% 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.
- Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) 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)Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)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/qwen3-8-27b-medium · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-4-6-adaptive/qwen3-8-27b-medium?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill