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 2026-09-09.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Grok 4.6 (medium) scores 32.9 points higher (43.0 vs 10.1) but costs 4.1× as much to run the benchmark ($1937 vs $476; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Grok 4.6 (medium) when you need intelligence above 10.1, and Qwen3 Coder Next when 10.1 is enough.
| Metric | Grok 4.6 (medium) | Qwen3 Coder Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 43.0 | 10.1 | −76.5% Qwen3 Coder Next is 76.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,936.75 | $476.03 | −75.4% Qwen3 Coder Next is 75.4% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 39.69s | 5.52s | −86.1% Qwen3 Coder Next is 86.1% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $6.00 | $0.35 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Not reported | Not reported |
Qwen3 Coder Next vs Grok 4.6 (medium): 76.5% less intelligence, 75.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 86.1% 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 Astra (low) scores 46.00 for $1537.
- Qwen3 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GLM-5.3-Flash scores 41.90 for $280.
Grok 4.6 (medium)Qwen3 Coder NextToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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