Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium)
Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium): 28.1% less intelligence, 66.0% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 53.5% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) | Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 28.1 | 20.2 | −28.1% Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reas… is 28.1% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,218.17 | $2,022.49 | +66.0% Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reas… is 66.0% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.30s | 14.28s | +53.5% Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reas… is 53.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.50 / $3.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
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.
- Qwen3.8 27B (Non-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)Qwen3.8 27B (Non-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/qwen3-8-27b-non-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-medium/qwen3-8-27b-non-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill