Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) vs Qwen3 Coder Next
Which is better for the money: Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) by SpaceXAI or Qwen3 Coder Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) scores 35.0 points higher (44.2 vs 9.2) but costs 5.5× as much to run the benchmark ($2242 vs $405; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) when you need intelligence above 9.2, and Qwen3 Coder Next when 9.2 is enough.
| Metric | Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) | Qwen3 Coder Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 44.2 | 9.2 | −79.2% Qwen3 Coder Next is 79.2% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,241.91 | $405.10 | −81.9% Qwen3 Coder Next is 81.9% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 34.05s | 6.22s | −81.7% Qwen3 Coder Next is 81.7% 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 (Xhigh): 79.2% less intelligence, 81.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 81.7% faster 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 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 (Xhigh)Qwen3 Coder NextToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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