Claude Opus 5 vs Qwen3.8 Max 0902

Two models head to head

Claude Opus 5 and Qwen3.8 Max 0902 are two frontier models, the ones you pick when quality comes first, one from Anthropic, the other from Alibaba Cloud (Qwen). Claude Opus 5 was released on July 24, 2026, Qwen3.8 Max 0902 on September 2, 2026.

All figures below come from public sources checked on October 22, 2026: models.dev and OpenRouter for prices and capabilities, Epoch AI for scores.

Performance

On our capability index, Claude Opus 5 scores 92.7 out of 100 and Qwen3.8 Max 0902 88.4. Claude Opus 5 leads by 4.3 points.

On the 3 benchmarks reported for both, Claude Opus 5 wins 2 times and Qwen3.8 Max 0902 1:

• GPQA Diamond (PhD-level science questions): Claude Opus 5 93.9%, Qwen3.8 Max 0902 92.3%
• OTIS Mock AIME (competition mathematics problems): Claude Opus 5 98.9%, Qwen3.8 Max 0902 100%
• FrontierMath (very hard research-level mathematics): Claude Opus 5 85.6%, Qwen3.8 Max 0902 65.6%

Budget

Claude Opus 5 costs $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens; Qwen3.8 Max 0902 costs $2 and $6.

For a typical agent task (read 20,000 tokens, write 2,000), expect $0.15 with Claude Opus 5 versus $0.052 with Qwen3.8 Max 0902. Qwen3.8 Max 0902 is 2.9 times cheaper, a gap that adds up quickly over 1,000 tasks: $98 difference.

Run the numbers with your own volumes in the agent cost calculator.

Features and limits

Both models have the same context window: 1,000,000 tokens, roughly 1,500 pages.

Reasoning mode: Claude Opus 5 yes, Qwen3.8 Max 0902 yes. Tool calling: Claude Opus 5 yes, Qwen3.8 Max 0902 yes. Image input: Claude Opus 5 yes, Qwen3.8 Max 0902 yes.

Neither publishes its weights: both are used through an API.

In short

Our reading of the data:

• Choose Claude Opus 5 for a higher capability index.
• Choose Qwen3.8 Max 0902 for a lower cost and a more recent release.

This verdict relies on public figures; it does not replace a trial on your own tasks.