Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) 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
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) scores 9.4 points higher (33.7 vs 24.3) but costs 2.0× as much to run the benchmark ($1336 vs $653; both premium class). Pick Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Sonnet 5 (Low).
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) | Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 24.3 | 33.7 | +38.7% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 38.7% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $652.70 | $1,336.09 | +104.7% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 2.0× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.73s | 60.72s | +595.5% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 595.5% slower |
| 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 (Low): 38.7% more intelligence, 104.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 595.5% 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 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 (Low)Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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