Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallba… scores 35.6 points higher (46.8 vs 11.2) but costs 3.1× as much to run the benchmark ($1027 vs $329; 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 11.2, and Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) when 11.2 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 46.8 | 11.2 | −76.1% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 76.1% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,027.40 | $328.86 | −68.0% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 68.0% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 15.86s | 46.17s | +191.1% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 191.1% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.14 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 76.1% less intelligence, 68.0% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 191.1% 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.
- Qwen3.5 9B (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/qwen3-5-9b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-high/qwen3-5-9b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill