Claude Sonnet 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) vs Qwen3 Coder Next
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) by Anthropic or Qwen3 Coder Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-08-17.
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Ma… scores 34.0 points higher (55.3 vs 21.3) but costs 16× as much to run the benchmark ($4011 vs $250; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Ma… when you need intelligence above 21.3, and Qwen3 Coder Next when 21.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) | Qwen3 Coder Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 55.3 | 21.3 | −61.5% Qwen3 Coder Next is 61.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $4,010.51 | $250.18 | −93.8% Qwen3 Coder Next is 93.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 174.60s | 4.63s | −97.3% Qwen3 Coder Next is 97.3% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.35 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Not reported | Not reported |
Qwen3 Coder Next vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort): 61.5% less intelligence, 93.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 97.3% faster end-to-end.
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) scores 63.10 for $3836.
- Qwen3 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-5.6 Luna (max) scores 52.30 for $172.
Compare something else
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5/qwen3-coder-next · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5/qwen3-coder-next?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill