Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)
Which is better for the money: Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) by SpaceXAI or Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) 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 16.6 points higher (44.2 vs 27.6) but costs 1.8× as much to run the benchmark ($2242 vs $1278; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Qwen3.8 27B (Medium).
| Metric | Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) | Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 44.2 | 27.6 | −37.6% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 37.6% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,241.91 | $1,277.59 | −43.0% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 43.0% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 47.23s | 58.08s | +23.0% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 23.0% 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 (Medium) vs Grok 4.6 (Xhigh): 37.6% less intelligence, 43.0% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 23.0% 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 (Medium) 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 (Medium)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-medium · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/grok-4-6-xhigh/qwen3-8-27b-medium?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill