Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) by SpaceXAI or Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) 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
Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) scores 10.5 points higher (44.2 vs 33.7) but costs 1.7× as much to run the benchmark ($2242 vs $1336; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh).
| Metric | Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) | Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 44.2 | 33.7 | −23.8% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 23.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,241.91 | $1,336.09 | −40.4% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 40.4% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 40.33s | 60.71s | +50.5% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 50.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $6.00 | $0.50 / $3.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) vs Grok 4.6 (Xhigh): 23.8% less intelligence, 40.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 50.5% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
- Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Grok 4.6 (Xhigh)Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)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/grok-4-6-xhigh/qwen3-8-27b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/grok-4-6-xhigh/qwen3-8-27b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill