Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-27.
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallba… scores 34.1 points higher (46.8 vs 12.7) but costs 4.4× as much to run the benchmark ($1027 vs $234; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallba… when you need intelligence above 12.7, and Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) when 12.7 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 46.8 | 12.7 | −72.9% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 72.9% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,027.40 | $233.56 | −77.3% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 77.3% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 16.53s | 21.63s | +30.9% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 30.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.23 / $2.30 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 72.9% less intelligence, 77.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 30.9% slower end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
- Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-high/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct-2507-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-high/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct-2507-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill