Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Qwen3.8 Max
Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Qwen3.8 Max are within three points on the Models at Work leaderboard, which we treat as a tie (66 vs 63 out of 100). On independent tests alone, Qwen3.8 Max is ahead (78 vs 68). Qwen3.8 Max is cheaper: 1,000 support replies cost about $8.40 at list price, against $10 on Claude Sonnet 5.5, which is 1.2 times as much. On the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, one of the independent tests, Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads 55 to 34.
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 · Anthropic | Qwen3.8 Max · Alibaba | |
|---|---|---|
| Leaderboard rank | #10 | #16 |
| Score (0–100) | 66 | 63 |
| Kind of work | Everyday default | Everyday default |
| Price per 1M tokens | $2 to read · $10 to write | $2 to read · $6 to write |
| Reads at once | 1M tokens (about 750,000 words) | 984K tokens (about 738,000 words) |
| Where you can get it | Claude Team and Enterprise, Amazon Bedrock, Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform (Google Cloud), Microsoft Foundry, Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot | Alibaba Cloud Model Studio |
| Can a company host it itself | No | No |
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index | 55 | 34 |
| Humanity's Last Exam, Diamond (Scale) | 37.50 | Not measured |
| Arena Text score | Not measured | 1483 (rank 22) |
| Arena WebDev score (qwen3.8-max-0902) | Not measured | 1674 (rank 10) |
| Scale MCP Atlas (Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B open-weight variant, xHigh) | Not measured | 84.50 |
| Humanity's Sixth Sense (Scale) | Not measured | 33.00 |
| Best for | Support replies at volume, Drafting proposals and reports, Summarising meetings and long documents, Answering questions from company documents | Multilingual customer chat, Automating multi-step tasks across business systems, Teams already buying from Alibaba Cloud |
Cost of 1,000 jobs
| 1,000 of these | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Qwen3.8 Max |
|---|---|---|
| Support repliesthe customer message, the account notes and two help articles read; a 300-word reply written | $10 | $8.40 |
| Documents processeda two-page invoice or form read; the fields pulled out | $7 | $5.80 |
| Calls summariseda 40-minute call transcript read; a summary and next steps written | $26 | $24 |
| Contracts revieweda 40-page contract read against a checklist; a memo of issues written | $75 | $69 |
| Drafts writtena brief and one example read; a 600-word email or proposal section written | $11 | $7.80 |
Worked out from each vendor’s list price and a fixed size for each job. A product built on a model charges its own price on top. See what every model costs for the same jobs.
Choose Claude Sonnet 5.5 for
- Support replies at volume
- Drafting proposals and reports
- Summarising meetings and long documents
- Answering questions from company documents
A sound everyday default: 55 on Artificial Analysis's index, four points behind Claude Opus 5.5, at half its list price.
Caveats: The saving depends on the effort setting: at the top setting Artificial Analysis's test run cost $10.02 per task, level with Opus 5.5 ($10.04). On Scale's Humanity's Last Exam, a set of expert-level questions, it scores 37.5 against 55.0 for Opus 5.5: move up for the hardest analysis. In Microsoft 365 Copilot, Claude models are on by default for most commercial customers but off in the EU, EFTA and UK until an administrator allows Anthropic as a subprocessor (a company permitted to handle your data), per Microsoft Learn. In Microsoft 365 Copilot it has been rolling out in phases across Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Chat since 30 September, with usage limits Microsoft has not published, per Microsoft's post of that date, which names Sonnet 5.5.
Choose Qwen3.8 Max for
- Multilingual customer chat
- Automating multi-step tasks across business systems
- Teams already buying from Alibaba Cloud
Alibaba's hosted flagship scores 34 on Artificial Analysis's index, a little above the open models GLM-5.3 (32) and MiMo-V2.6-Pro (30), at about 1.4 times GLM's list price and about five times MiMo's.
Caveats: The hosted model is closed; the open version is a different model that Artificial Analysis has not scored and that needs data-centre hardware. Slow: about 35 tokens (word-pieces) a second in Artificial Analysis's measurement. The price is Artificial Analysis's listing, not read from Alibaba's own page. Alibaba Cloud Model Studio is listed from our researcher's reading of Alibaba's 3 August announcement; the page could not be re-read this run. It ranks 16th partly because the scoring marks every model on where a business can buy it, and it has one listed place.
What people running them say
Claude Sonnet 5.5: Less discussed than Opus or Haiku because it just works; the news was October's price cut for text it has already been sent once and reads again, to $0.10 per million tokens (the unit vendors bill by).
Qwen3.8 Max: The launch thread on Hacker News, a developer forum (1,124 upvotes, 612 comments), was dominated by people who already run the smaller Qwen 3.6 and 3.8 models on their own computers and are cancelling Claude subscriptions; the Max itself was praised as the first model of Qwen's top class that anyone can download and host. Sceptics (Aurornis) say Qwen output 'has to be discarded for anything other than really easy tasks', and several note that at current electricity prices hosting it yourself costs more than DeepSeek's discounted rate for repeated text.
Questions people ask
Which is better, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Qwen3.8 Max?
Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Qwen3.8 Max are within three points on the Models at Work leaderboard, which we treat as a tie (66 vs 63 out of 100). On independent tests alone, Qwen3.8 Max is ahead (78 vs 68). Qwen3.8 Max is cheaper: 1,000 support replies cost about $8.40 at list price, against $10 on Claude Sonnet 5.5, which is 1.2 times as much. On the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, one of the independent tests, Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads 55 to 34.
When should I choose Claude Sonnet 5.5 over Qwen3.8 Max?
Choose Claude Sonnet 5.5 for support replies at volume, drafting proposals and reports, summarising meetings and long documents, answering questions from company documents. A sound everyday default: 55 on Artificial Analysis's index, four points behind Claude Opus 5.5, at half its list price.
When should I choose Qwen3.8 Max over Claude Sonnet 5.5?
Choose Qwen3.8 Max for multilingual customer chat, automating multi-step tasks across business systems, teams already buying from alibaba cloud. Alibaba's hosted flagship scores 34 on Artificial Analysis's index, a little above the open models GLM-5.3 (32) and MiMo-V2.6-Pro (30), at about 1.4 times GLM's list price and about five times MiMo's.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Qwen3.8 Max?
Claude Sonnet 5.5 costs $2 per million tokens it reads (input) and $10 per million tokens it writes (output) on Anthropic's list price (Claude pricing, read Nov 12, 2026). A token is about three-quarters of a word. Qwen3.8 Max costs $2 per million tokens it reads (input) and $6 per million tokens it writes (output) on Alibaba's list price (Qwen3.8 Max (0902) - Artificial Analysis, read Nov 12, 2026). A token is about three-quarters of a word.
What do 1,000 jobs cost on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Qwen3.8 Max?
At list price: 1,000 support replies cost $10 on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and $8.40 on Qwen3.8 Max; 1,000 documents processed cost $7 on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and $5.80 on Qwen3.8 Max; 1,000 calls summarised cost $26 on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and $24 on Qwen3.8 Max; 1,000 contracts reviewed cost $75 on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and $69 on Qwen3.8 Max; 1,000 drafts written cost $11 on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and $7.80 on Qwen3.8 Max. A product built on either model charges its own price on top.
Scores come from the Models at Work leaderboard: Score is 0 to 100 and computed, not typed. 40% is independent testing (Artificial Analysis, Arena, Scale, Epoch, Vals and others; each test is scaled against the best score on this board, and tests of real work, such as finished freelance projects or professional tasks, count double the exams). 30% is price: the vendor's list price for a typical mix of reading and writing, on a fixed scale from $0.05 to $60 per million tokens, so a model that costs a fifth as much gains real ground. 15% is what people report after running it, from Signals and linked threads. 15% is fit: how much text it can take in at once and where a business can get it (the products and clouds that carry it), with a small credit for open weights. A missing component drops out and the rest are reweighted. A model with no independent test yet is provisional and ranks below every measured one. Within three points is a tie. Vendor-published figures are labelled and never counted. Prices are vendor list prices where published; a typical mix assumes three parts reading to one part writing.