Claude Sonnet 5 vs Qwen3.8 Max: Specs & Benchmark Comparison
Claude Sonnet 5 is developed by Anthropic, while Qwen3.8 Max comes from Alibaba. Claude Sonnet 5 was released in June 2026, and Qwen3.8 Max followed 2 months later in August 2026. Qwen3.8 Max has a published size of about 2.4 trillion parameters; Anthropic has not disclosed the parameter count of Claude Sonnet 5.
We have 22 benchmark results for Claude Sonnet 5 and 2 benchmark results for Qwen3.8 Max, but they were measured on different benchmarks, so there is no like-for-like scoreboard.
Claude Sonnet 5 is the cheaper API at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, about 25% below Qwen3.8 Max at $2.50 and $6.25. Both accept a context window of about 1M tokens. Both accept text and images as input.
| Characteristic | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3.8 Max |
|---|---|---|
| Company | Anthropic | Alibaba |
| Release Date | June 30, 2026 | August 2, 2026 |
| Parameters | — | 2.4T |
| Multimodal | Yes | Yes |
| Context (input) | 1.0M | 1.0M |
| Context (output) | 64K | 131K |
| Input Price / 1M | $2.00 | $2.50 |
| Output Price / 1M | $10.00 | $6.25 |
| Average Score | 60.5% | 93.0% |
Verdict
Qwen3.8 Max leads in 2 out of 4 comparison categories.
Both models show comparable average scores: Claude Sonnet 5 — 0.6, Qwen3.8 Max — 0.9.
Qwen3.8 Max is 1.4x cheaper: input $2.50/1M vs $2.00/1M tokens.
Same context size: 1M tokens.
Qwen3.8 Max is newer: released 8/2/2026 vs 6/30/2026.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better for coding — Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3.8 Max?
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The Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen3.8 Max comparison is updated for 2026. Data includes benchmark results, API pricing, context window size and other specifications. For more detailed information, visit the Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3.8 Max page. See also the complete list of AI model comparisons.