Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) vs Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) by Anthropic or Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) scores 6.7 points higher (28.1 vs 21.4) but costs 1.1× as much to run the benchmark ($1218 vs $1145; both premium class). Pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning).
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) | Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 28.1 | 21.4 | −23.8% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 23.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,218.17 | $1,145.36 | −6.0% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 6.0% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.02s | 112.14s | +1143.2% Qwen3.6 27B (Reasonin… is 1143.2% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.60 / $3.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium): 23.8% less intelligence, 6.0% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 1143.2% 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.
- Qwen3.6 27B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium)Qwen3.6 27B (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/qwen3-6-27b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-medium/qwen3-6-27b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill