Grok 4.6 (High) vs Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
Which is better for the money: Grok 4.6 (High) by SpaceXAI or Qwen3.8 Max (0902) 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
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) scores 1.1 points higher (45.4 vs 44.3) but costs 2.5× as much to run the benchmark ($4935 vs $1963; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Qwen3.8 Max (0902) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Grok 4.6 (High).
| Metric | Grok 4.6 (High) | Qwen3.8 Max (0902) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 44.3 | 45.4 | +2.5% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 2.5% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,962.90 | $4,934.79 | +151.4% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 2.5× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 34.63s | 65.39s | +88.8% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 88.8% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $6.00 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) vs Grok 4.6 (High): 2.5% more intelligence, 151.4% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 88.8% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Grok 4.6 (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
Grok 4.6 (High)Qwen3.8 Max (0902)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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