Grok 4.6 (Medium) vs Qwen3 Coder Next
Which is better for the money: Grok 4.6 (Medium) by SpaceXAI or Qwen3 Coder Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Grok 4.6 (Medium) scores 33.6 points higher (42.8 vs 9.2) but costs 3.8× as much to run the benchmark ($1557 vs $405; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Grok 4.6 (Medium) when you need intelligence above 9.2, and Qwen3 Coder Next when 9.2 is enough.
| Metric | Grok 4.6 (Medium) | Qwen3 Coder Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 42.8 | 9.2 | −78.5% Qwen3 Coder Next is 78.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,557.04 | $405.10 | −74.0% Qwen3 Coder Next is 74.0% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 31.56s | 6.44s | −79.6% Qwen3 Coder Next is 79.6% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $6.00 | $0.31 / $1.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Qwen3 Coder Next vs Grok 4.6 (Medium): 78.5% less intelligence, 74.0% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 79.6% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Grok 4.6 (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Qwen3 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
Grok 4.6 (Medium)Qwen3 Coder NextToday'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/grok-4-6-medium/qwen3-coder-next · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/grok-4-6-medium/qwen3-coder-next?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill