💰 Unit Cost Winner Qwen 3.8 27B $0.20/1M in · $0.60/1M out
⚡ Latency & Speed Winner Qwen 3.8 27B 120ms TTFT · 140 tok/s
💻 Coding (SWE) Winner Claude 4.5 Sonnet 75.8% SWE-bench · 96% HumanEval
🧠 STEM Reasoning Winner Claude 4.5 Sonnet 84.2% GPQA · 97.5% MATH-500

Which model is better: Claude 4.5 Sonnet or Qwen 3.8 27B?

Qwen 3.8 27B is 93.3% cheaper for input tokens ($0.20 vs. $3.00 per 1M tokens) and $0.60 vs. $15.00 for output tokens (15.0x cost advantage). In terms of operational performance, Qwen 3.8 27B delivers lower response latency at 120ms TTFT (260ms faster than Claude 4.5 Sonnet) with 140 vs. 84 tok/s throughput. Claude 4.5 Sonnet leads coding evaluations at 75.8% SWE-bench Verified vs. 58.4% for Qwen 3.8 27B and 84.2% vs. 68.0% on GPQA Diamond.
Verified daily via automated API latency tests and official documentation.

Verified Performance & Unit Economics Delta (12 Dimensions)

Daily synchronized metrics across token pricing, prompt cache economics, latency, throughput, and 5 capability benchmarks.

Metric / Dimension Claude 4.5 Sonnet Qwen 3.8 27B Net Delta / Advantage
Input Cost / 1M Tokens $3.00 $0.20 Qwen 3.8 27B is 15.0x cheaper
Output Cost / 1M Tokens $15.00 $0.60 Qwen 3.8 27B (96.0% lower)
Prompt Cache Read / 1M $0.300 $0.050 Qwen 3.8 27B is 6.0x cheaper
Prompt Cache Write / 1M $3.75 $0.20 Qwen 3.8 27B is 18.8x cheaper
Context Window (Max Output) 205k (64k out) 131k (16k out) Claude 4.5 Sonnet (1.6x larger context)
Avg TTFT Response Latency 380ms 120ms Qwen 3.8 27B (260ms faster)
Generation Speed (Throughput) 84 tok/s 140 tok/s Qwen 3.8 27B (+56 tok/s faster)
SWE-bench Verified (Coding) 75.8% 58.4% Claude 4.5 Sonnet (+17.4% lead)
GPQA Diamond (PhD STEM) 84.2% 68% Claude 4.5 Sonnet (+16.2% lead)
MMLU-Pro (Multi-Discipline) 90.4% 81.2% Claude 4.5 Sonnet (+9.2% lead)
MATH-500 (Quantitative Logic) 97.5% 86.4% Claude 4.5 Sonnet (+11.1% lead)
Inference Value Score (IVR) 56.5 / 100 74.9 / 100 Qwen 3.8 27B (+18.4 pts)

Interactive Monthly Token Economics & ROI Forecaster

Model production workloads across prompt, completion, and cached context tokens, or switch models on the fly.

25.0M Tokens
500K 50M 250M 500M+
5.0M Tokens
100K 25M 75M 150M+
50% Cached
0% (Uncached) 25% 50% (Typical Agent) 95% Max

Estimated Monthly Spend

Claude 4.5 Sonnet $116.25

$3.00/1M in · $15.00/1M out

Prompt Cache: $0.300/1M read · $3.75/1M write

Qwen 3.8 27B $6.13

$0.20/1M in · $0.60/1M out

Prompt Cache: $0.050/1M read · $0.20/1M write

Projected Monthly Cost Reduction
$110.13 / mo
(94.7% lower cost with Qwen 3.8 27B)
Open Full Matchup Analysis →
A

When to Choose Claude 4.5 Sonnet

Choose Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Anthropic) for end-to-end autonomous coding agents, complex multi-file debugging, browser/GUI automation, and high-precision technical writing — offering a 204k context window, 380ms TTFT, and $3.00/1M input pricing ($0.300/1M cached reads).

B

When to Choose Qwen 3.8 27B

Choose Qwen 3.8 27B (Alibaba Cloud) for high-performance 27B open weights optimized for local deployment, code generation, and low-latency production pipelines — offering a 131k context window, 120ms TTFT, and $0.20/1M input pricing ($0.050/1M cached reads).

Related Questions & Decision Factors

Which is cheaper: Claude 4.5 Sonnet or Qwen 3.8 27B?

Qwen 3.8 27B is cheaper at $0.20/1M input tokens ($0.60/1M output) compared to $3.00/1M input ($15.00/1M output) for Claude 4.5 Sonnet.

Which model has lower TTFT latency and higher tok/s throughput: Claude 4.5 Sonnet or Qwen 3.8 27B?

Qwen 3.8 27B delivers faster first-token latency at 120ms TTFT (140 tok/s throughput) compared to 380ms TTFT (84 tok/s) for Claude 4.5 Sonnet.

How do Claude 4.5 Sonnet and Qwen 3.8 27B compare on SWE-bench coding and GPQA Diamond reasoning?

On SWE-bench Verified software engineering, Claude 4.5 Sonnet scores 75.8% versus 58.4% for Qwen 3.8 27B. On GPQA Diamond graduate-level STEM reasoning, Claude 4.5 Sonnet scores 84.2% versus 68% for Qwen 3.8 27B (and 97.5% vs 86.4% on MATH-500).

When should you choose Claude 4.5 Sonnet?

Choose Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Anthropic) for end-to-end autonomous coding agents, complex multi-file debugging, browser/GUI automation, and high-precision technical writing — offering a 204k context window, 380ms TTFT, and $3.00/1M input pricing ($0.300/1M cached reads).

When should you choose Qwen 3.8 27B?

Choose Qwen 3.8 27B (Alibaba Cloud) for high-performance 27B open weights optimized for local deployment, code generation, and low-latency production pipelines — offering a 131k context window, 120ms TTFT, and $0.20/1M input pricing ($0.050/1M cached reads).

Explore High-Priority Related Model Matchups