Standard Compute
Model Comparison 2026

Claude Opus 4.8 vs Qwen3 235B A22B

Claude Opus 4.8
Anthropic · Frontier · Proprietary
$11/1M · 1M ctx
Qwen3 235B A22B
Alibaba (Qwen) · Budget · Open weights
$0.23/1M · 262K ctx

Community Vote

Pick a winner in each dimension — change your vote anytime.

Output Quality
Correctness and depth of what it produces
Agentic Ability
Tool calls, instruction-following, and multi-step tasks
Speed
Tokens per second and time-to-first-token
Value for $
How much capability you get per dollar
Reliability
Consistent results — fewer refusals, loops, and format breaks

Specs & Pricing, Side by Side

Spec
Opus 4.8
Qwen3 235B
Maker
Anthropic
Alibaba (Qwen)
Blended price / 1M
$11
$0.23
Input / output
$5.00 in · $25 out / 1M tokens
$0.09 in · $0.55 out / 1M tokens
Context window
1M
262K
Open weights
No
Yes
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
No
Output Quality
9.6
8.0
Agentic Ability
9.6
8.0
Speed
7.2
8.2
Value for $
7.5
10.0
Reliability
9.5
8.8

Pricing and capabilities synced from the OpenRouter catalogue. Scores are editorial (0–10).

Verdict: Opus 4.8 or Qwen3 235B?

Updated 2026-08-02

Choose Claude Opus 4.8 if you want hard, high-stakes coding and reasoning where quality matters more than cost. Choose Qwen3 235B A22B if you want self-hosted or ultra-cheap open-weight agents.

In our editorial scoring, Claude Opus 4.8 leads in 3 of five dimensions (output quality, agentic ability and reliability), while Qwen3 235B A22B leads in 2. On price, Claude Opus 4.8 runs about $11 per 1M tokens (blended) and is proprietary; Qwen3 235B A22B is about $0.23 and open-weight.

Where Opus 4.8 falls short
  • Among the most expensive models per token
  • Slower than lighter models on simple tasks
Full Opus 4.8 breakdown →
Where Qwen3 235B falls short
  • Behind frontier models on quality
  • Needs real GPUs to self-host well
Full Qwen3 235B breakdown →

The model is half the story — the agent is the other half

The model picks the moves; the agent runs the loop, the tools, and the guardrails. Once you've chosen a model, see which agent gets the most out of it.

Compare AI agents →

Every model on this page is included with Standard Compute

Standard Compute

Current frontier models Claude Fable 5 · GPT-5.6 Sol

Your agents never stop.
Your bill never grows.

Frontier models when it counts. Efficient models when it doesn’t. No usage limits. One flat bill.

Free trial · no card · plans from $39/mo

Free trial No credit card needed Billing by Stripe2,500+ agent users

Related comparisons

Fable 5 vs Opus 4.8Opus 4.8 vs SolOpus 4.8 vs GPT-5.5Opus 4.8 vs Gemini 3.1 ProOpus 4.8 vs GLM 5.2Opus 4.8 vs Qwen3.7 MaxOpus 4.8 vs DeepSeek V4 ProOpus 4.8 vs Kimi K2.6