Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) vs Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B 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
Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B scores 15.6 points higher (39.9 vs 24.3) but costs 4.0× as much to run the benchmark ($2632 vs $653; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B when you need intelligence above 24.3, and Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) when 24.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) | Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 24.3 | 39.9 | +64.2% Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B is 64.2% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $652.70 | $2,632.05 | +303.3% Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B is 4.0× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.43s | 64.84s | +587.6% Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B is 587.6% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Low): 64.2% more intelligence, 303.3% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 587.6% 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.
- Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Low)Qwen3.8 2.4T A95BToday'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-low/qwen3-8-2-4t-a95b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-low/qwen3-8-2-4t-a95b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill