Gemini 3.6 Flash (High) vs Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
Which is better for the money: Gemini 3.6 Flash (High) 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 11.4 points higher (45.4 vs 34.0) but costs 3.1× as much to run the benchmark ($4935 vs $1614; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 Max (0902) when you need intelligence above 34.0, and Gemini 3.6 Flash (High) when 34.0 is enough.
| Metric | Gemini 3.6 Flash (High) | Qwen3.8 Max (0902) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 34.0 | 45.4 | +33.5% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 33.5% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,614.42 | $4,934.79 | +205.7% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 3.1× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 18.02s | 65.39s | +262.9% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 262.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.75 / $3.75 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech, Video | Text, Image |
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) vs Gemini 3.6 Flash (High): 33.5% more intelligence, 205.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 262.9% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Gemini 3.6 Flash (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- 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 3.6 Flash (High)Qwen3.8 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-3-6-flash/qwen3-8-max · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gemini-3-6-flash/qwen3-8-max?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill