Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) vs Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) by Anthropic or Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) scores 16.0 points higher (34.4 vs 18.4) but costs 3.5× as much to run the benchmark ($3255 vs $941; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) when you need intelligence above 18.4, and Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) when 18.4 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) | Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 34.4 | 18.4 | −46.5% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 46.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $3,255.40 | $940.97 | −71.1% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 71.1% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 32.78s | 65.86s | +100.9% Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Re… is 100.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.60 / $3.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh): 46.5% less intelligence, 71.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 100.9% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
- Qwen3.5 397B A17B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh)Qwen3.5 397B A17B (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-xhigh/qwen3-5-397b-a17b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-xhigh/qwen3-5-397b-a17b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill