Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Low)
Which is better for the money: Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) by Google or Qwen3.8 27B (Low) 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
Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) scores 6.4 points higher (32.6 vs 26.2) but costs 4.0× as much to run the benchmark ($4222 vs $1060; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) when you need intelligence above 26.2, and Qwen3.8 27B (Low) when 26.2 is enough.
| Metric | Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) | Qwen3.8 27B (Low) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 32.6 | 26.2 | −19.6% Qwen3.8 27B (Low) is 19.6% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $4,222.12 | $1,060.08 | −74.9% Qwen3.8 27B (Low) is 74.9% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 16.57s | 55.17s | +233.0% Qwen3.8 27B (Low) is 233.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $1.50 / $9.00 | $0.50 / $3.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech, Video | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8 27B (Low) vs Gemini 3.5 Flash (High): 19.6% less intelligence, 74.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 233.0% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Gemini 3.5 Flash (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- Qwen3.8 27B (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Gemini 3.5 Flash (High)Qwen3.8 27B (Low)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/gemini-3-5-flash/qwen3-8-27b-low · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gemini-3-5-flash/qwen3-8-27b-low?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill