Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) vs Qwen3.8 Max
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) 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 12.1 points higher (40.2 vs 28.1) but costs 2.6× as much to run the benchmark ($3172 vs $1218; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Qwen3.8 Max when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium).
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) | Qwen3.8 Max | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 28.1 | 40.2 | +43.1% Qwen3.8 Max is 43.1% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,218.17 | $3,172.37 | +160.4% Qwen3.8 Max is 2.6× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.01s | 64.64s | +617.4% Qwen3.8 Max is 617.4% 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 (Medium): 43.1% more intelligence, 160.4% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 617.4% 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 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium)Qwen3.8 MaxToday's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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