Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3 Coder Next

Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Qwen3 Coder Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 51.90
Total cost: $2177

AlibabaQwen3 Coder NextOff the frontier

Intelligence: 9.20
Total cost: $405

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallb… scores 42.7 points higher (51.9 vs 9.2) but costs 5.4× as much to run the benchmark ($2177 vs $405; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallb… when you need intelligence above 9.2, and Qwen3 Coder Next when 9.2 is enough.

Metric	Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback)	Qwen3 Coder Next	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	51.9	9.2	−82.3% Qwen3 Coder Next is 82.3% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$2,176.82	$405.10	−81.4% Qwen3 Coder Next is 81.4% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	30.70s	6.20s	−79.8% Qwen3 Coder Next is 79.8% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$2.00 / $10.0	$0.31 / $1.00
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text

Qwen3 Coder Next vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback): 82.3% less intelligence, 81.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 79.8% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback): what beats it Qwen3 Coder Next: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
Qwen3 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback)Qwen3 Coder NextToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model

Matchup

Compare something else

Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-xhigh/qwen3-coder-next · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-xhigh/qwen3-coder-next?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill