Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 Max (0902) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 3.0% less intelligence, 380.3% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 304.0% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Qwen3.8 Max (0902) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 46.8 | 45.4 | −3.0% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 3.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,027.40 | $4,934.79 | +380.3% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 4.8× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 15.86s | 64.07s | +304.0% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 304.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Today's Pareto frontier
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.
- Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)Qwen3.8 Max (0902)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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