GLM-5.2 (Max) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning)

Which is better for the money: GLM-5.2 (Max) by Z AI or Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-27.

Clear winner

Z AIGLM-5.2 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 33.70
Total cost: $1896

AlibabaQwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 20.20
Total cost: $2022

Verdict

Pick GLM-5.2 (Max)

Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning) vs GLM-5.2 (Max): 40.1% less intelligence, 6.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 51.4% faster end-to-end.

Metric	GLM-5.2 (Max)	Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	33.7	20.2	−40.1% Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reas… is 40.1% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$1,896.44	$2,022.49	+6.6% Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reas… is 6.6% more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	28.50s	13.84s	−51.4% Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reas… is 51.4% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$1.40 / $4.40	$0.50 / $3.00
Input modalities	Text	Text, Image, Video

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GLM-5.2 (Max): what beats it Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

GLM-5.2 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.

GLM-5.2 (Max)Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model

Matchup

Compare something else

Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/glm-5-2/qwen3-8-27b-non-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/glm-5-2/qwen3-8-27b-non-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill