Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) vs Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8-Flash-Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
Qwen3.8-Flash-Next vs Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max): 32.2% more intelligence, 92.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 56.2% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) | Qwen3.8-Flash-Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 30.1 | 39.8 | +32.2% Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is 32.2% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $4,924.80 | $362.72 | −92.6% Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is 92.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 115.26s | 50.47s | −56.2% Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is 56.2% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.15 / $0.47 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
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-Flash-Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max)Qwen3.8-Flash-NextToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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