Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite vs Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
Which is better for the money: Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite by Google 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 23.2 points higher (45.4 vs 22.2) but costs 13× as much to run the benchmark ($4935 vs $366; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 Max (0902) when you need intelligence above 22.2, and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite when 22.2 is enough.
| Metric | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | Qwen3.8 Max (0902) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 22.2 | 45.4 | +104.5% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 2.0× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $365.63 | $4,934.79 | +1249.7% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 13× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.51s | 64.02s | +573.2% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 573.2% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.30 / $2.50 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech, Video | Text, Image |
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) vs Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite: 104.5% more intelligence, 1249.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 573.2% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
- 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.
Gemini 3.5 Flash-LiteQwen3.8 Max (0902)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
Compare something else
Agents:
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/gemini-3-5-flash-lite/qwen3-8-max · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gemini-3-5-flash-lite/qwen3-8-max?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill