Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) vs Qwen3.8 Max
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 Max by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3.8 Max scores 15.9 points higher (40.2 vs 24.3) but costs 4.9× as much to run the benchmark ($3172 vs $653; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 Max when you need intelligence above 24.3, and Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) when 24.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) | Qwen3.8 Max | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 24.3 | 40.2 | +65.4% Qwen3.8 Max is 65.4% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $652.70 | $3,172.37 | +386.0% Qwen3.8 Max is 4.9× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.68s | 62.87s | +624.3% Qwen3.8 Max is 624.3% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8 Max vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Low): 65.4% more intelligence, 386.0% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 624.3% 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 Max is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Low)Qwen3.8 MaxToday's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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