Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) vs Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) by Anthropic or Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) 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
Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) scores 27.0 points higher (38.2 vs 11.2) but costs 21× as much to run the benchmark ($6998 vs $329; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) when you need intelligence above 11.2, and Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) when 11.2 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) | Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 38.2 | 11.2 | −70.7% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 70.7% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $6,998.25 | $328.86 | −95.3% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 95.3% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 190.29s | 43.21s | −77.3% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 77.3% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.14 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Max): 70.7% less intelligence, 95.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 77.3% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Max)Qwen3.5 9B (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/qwen3-5-9b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5/qwen3-5-9b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill