Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) vs Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) by Anthropic or Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) 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
Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) scores 16.9 points higher (28.1 vs 11.2) but costs 3.7× as much to run the benchmark ($1218 vs $329; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) when you need intelligence above 11.2, and Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) when 11.2 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) | Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 28.1 | 11.2 | −60.1% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 60.1% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,218.17 | $328.86 | −73.0% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 73.0% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.01s | 43.21s | +379.6% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 379.6% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.14 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium): 60.1% less intelligence, 73.0% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 379.6% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium)Qwen3.5 9B (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-medium/qwen3-5-9b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-medium/qwen3-5-9b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill