Grok 4.6 (high) vs Qwen3 Coder Next
Which is better for the money: Grok 4.6 (high) by SpaceXAI or Qwen3 Coder Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-08-19.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Grok 4.6 (high) scores 39.6 points higher (60.9 vs 21.3) but costs 4.3× as much to run the benchmark ($1068 vs $250; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Grok 4.6 (high) when you need intelligence above 21.3, and Qwen3 Coder Next when 21.3 is enough.
| Metric | Grok 4.6 (high) | Qwen3 Coder Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 60.9 | 21.3 | −65.0% Qwen3 Coder Next is 65.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,068.47 | $250.18 | −76.6% Qwen3 Coder Next is 76.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 45.74s | 4.97s | −89.1% Qwen3 Coder Next is 89.1% 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 (high): 65.0% less intelligence, 76.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 89.1% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Grok 4.6 (high) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Qwen3 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-5.6 Luna (max) scores 52.30 for $172.
Grok 4.6 (high)Qwen3 Coder NextToday'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/qwen3-coder-next · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/grok-4-6/qwen3-coder-next?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill