Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)

Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, 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.

Trade-off

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

Intelligence: 56.00
Total cost: $7260

AlibabaQwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 33.70
Total cost: $1336

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallbac… scores 22.3 points higher (56.0 vs 33.7) but costs 5.4× as much to run the benchmark ($7260 vs $1336; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallbac… when you need intelligence above 33.7, and Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) when 33.7 is enough.

Metric	Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)	Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	56.0	33.7	−39.8% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 39.8% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$7,259.50	$1,336.09	−81.6% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 81.6% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	419.55s	60.72s	−85.5% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 85.5% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$2.00 / $10.0	$0.50 / $3.00
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image, Video

Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback): 39.8% less intelligence, 81.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 85.5% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback): what beats it Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
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 (Max, Default Fallback)Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)Today'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/qwen3-8-27b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5/qwen3-8-27b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill