Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) vs Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) by Anthropic or Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (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 (Low) scores 11.6 points higher (24.3 vs 12.7) but costs 2.8× as much to run the benchmark ($653 vs $234; premium vs mid-range cost classes). Pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning).
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) | Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 24.3 | 12.7 | −47.7% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 47.7% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $652.70 | $233.56 | −64.2% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 64.2% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.43s | 22.73s | +141.0% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 141.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.23 / $2.30 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Low): 47.7% less intelligence, 64.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 141.0% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Low)Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (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-low/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct-2507-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-low/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct-2507-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill