Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, 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.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallbac… scores 24.7 points higher (35.9 vs 11.2) but costs 1.5× as much to run the benchmark ($482 vs $329; both mid-range class). Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallbac… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning).
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) | Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 35.9 | 11.2 | −68.8% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 68.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $482.13 | $328.86 | −31.8% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 31.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 5.93s | 43.82s | +639.0% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 639.0% 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 (Low, Default Fallback): 68.8% less intelligence, 31.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 639.0% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
- Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback)Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)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-5-5-low/qwen3-5-9b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-low/qwen3-5-9b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill