Qwen3.8 27B (Low) vs Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
Which is better for the money: Qwen3.8 27B (Low) by Alibaba or Qwen3.8 Max (0902) 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
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) scores 19.2 points higher (45.4 vs 26.2) but costs 4.7× as much to run the benchmark ($4935 vs $1060; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 Max (0902) when you need intelligence above 26.2, and Qwen3.8 27B (Low) when 26.2 is enough.
| Metric | Qwen3.8 27B (Low) | Qwen3.8 Max (0902) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 26.2 | 45.4 | +73.3% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 73.3% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,060.08 | $4,934.79 | +365.5% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 4.7× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 55.56s | 62.92s | +13.2% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 13.2% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.50 / $3.00 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Video | Text, Image |
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Low): 73.3% more intelligence, 365.5% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 13.2% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Qwen3.8 27B (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
- 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.
Qwen3.8 27B (Low)Qwen3.8 Max (0902)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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