Qwen3.8 Max (0902) vs Solar Mini 4

Which is better for the money: Qwen3.8 Max (0902) by Alibaba or Solar Mini 4 by Upstage? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.

Trade-off

AlibabaQwen3.8 Max (0902)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 45.40
Total cost: $4935

UpstageSolar Mini 4Off the frontier

Intelligence: 24.10
Total cost: $502

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Qwen3.8 Max (0902) scores 21.3 points higher (45.4 vs 24.1) but costs 9.8× as much to run the benchmark ($4935 vs $502; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 Max (0902) when you need intelligence above 24.1, and Solar Mini 4 when 24.1 is enough.

Metric	Qwen3.8 Max (0902)	Solar Mini 4	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	45.4	24.1	−46.9% Solar Mini 4 is 46.9% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$4,934.79	$502.02	−89.8% Solar Mini 4 is 89.8% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	64.05s	27.46s	−57.1% Solar Mini 4 is 57.1% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$2.00 / $6.00	$0.10 / $0.40
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text

Solar Mini 4 vs Qwen3.8 Max (0902): 46.9% less intelligence, 89.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 57.1% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Qwen3.8 Max (0902): what beats it Solar Mini 4: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

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.
Solar Mini 4 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.

Qwen3.8 Max (0902)Solar Mini 4Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model

Matchup

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Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/qwen3-8-max/solar-mini4 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/qwen3-8-max/solar-mini4?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill