Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) vs Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 Max (0902) 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 (0902) scores 17.3 points higher (45.4 vs 28.1) but costs 4.1× as much to run the benchmark ($4935 vs $1218; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 Max (0902) when you need intelligence above 28.1, and Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) when 28.1 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) | Qwen3.8 Max (0902) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 28.1 | 45.4 | +61.6% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 61.6% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,218.17 | $4,934.79 | +305.1% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 4.1× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.01s | 65.39s | +625.7% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 625.7% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium): 61.6% more intelligence, 305.1% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 625.7% 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.
- Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium)Qwen3.8 Max (0902)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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