Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) 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 (Medium, Default Fallback)
Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 17.4% less intelligence, 114.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 866.7% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 40.8 | 33.7 | −17.4% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 17.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $622.28 | $1,336.09 | +114.7% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 2.1× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.28s | 60.71s | +866.7% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 866.7% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.50 / $3.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)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-medium/qwen3-8-27b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-medium/qwen3-8-27b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill