LongCat 2.0 vs Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
Which is better for the money: LongCat 2.0 by LongCat 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 26.3 points higher (45.4 vs 19.1) but costs 9.1× as much to run the benchmark ($4935 vs $545; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 Max (0902) when you need intelligence above 19.1, and LongCat 2.0 when 19.1 is enough.
| Metric | LongCat 2.0 | Qwen3.8 Max (0902) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 19.1 | 45.4 | +137.7% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 2.4× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $544.74 | $4,934.79 | +805.9% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 9.1× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 35.51s | 64.05s | +80.4% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 80.4% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.75 / $2.95 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image |
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) vs LongCat 2.0: 137.7% more intelligence, 805.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 80.4% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- LongCat 2.0 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- 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.
LongCat 2.0Qwen3.8 Max (0902)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/longcat-2-0/qwen3-8-max · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/longcat-2-0/qwen3-8-max?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill