Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) vs Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
Which is better for the money: Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) by Alibaba or Qwen3.8 Max (0902) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) scores 17.8 points higher (45.4 vs 27.6) but costs 4.2× as much to run the benchmark ($4935 vs $1165; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 Max (0902) when you need intelligence above 27.6, and Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) when 27.6 is enough.
| Metric | Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) | Qwen3.8 Max (0902) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 27.6 | 45.4 | +64.5% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 64.5% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,165.00 | $4,934.79 | +323.6% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 4.2× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 55.12s | 63.23s | +14.7% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 14.7% 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 (Medium): 64.5% more intelligence, 323.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 14.7% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) 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.
Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)Qwen3.8 Max (0902)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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