ANTHROPIC VS ALIBABA
Claude Opus 4.8 vs Qwen3.5 Plus
Qwen3.5 Plus is about 11x cheaper than Claude Opus 4.8 on a blended 3:1 input:output rate — the same 10K-in/2K-out request costs $0.0088 vs $0.10. Both models have the same 1,000,000-token context window.
Pricing verified
API pricing per 1M tokens
| Model | Input / 1M tokens | Output / 1M tokens | Blended (3:1 mix) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 4.8 | $5.00 | $25.00 | $10.00 |
| Qwen3.5 Plus | $0.40 | $2.40 | $0.90 |
Rates from official Anthropic pricing and official Alibaba pricing, checked 2026-08-11.
What a real workload costs
Example: one request with 10,000 input tokens and 2,000 output tokens, then that request at 100,000 runs per month.
| Model | Per request (10K in / 2K out) | Per month (100K requests) | Monthly delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 4.8 | $0.10 | $10,000 | +$9,120 |
| Qwen3.5 Plus | $0.0088 | $880 | — |
Model your own prompt sizes and volumes in the token cost analyzer, or check caching savings with the prompt caching calculator.
Specs side by side
| Spec | Claude Opus 4.8 | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Alibaba |
| Context window | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Model class | Reasoning | General text |
| Tokenizer | Proprietary (counts estimated) | Proprietary (counts estimated) |
Count tokens for each model on its own page: Claude Opus 4.8 token counter and Qwen3.5 Plus token counter. All Anthropic models are on the Claude Token Counter. All Alibaba models are on the Qwen Token Counter.
FAQ
Claude Opus 4.8 vs Qwen3.5 Plus FAQ
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or Qwen3.5 Plus?
Qwen3.5 Plus is cheaper. At rates checked 2026-08-11, Claude Opus 4.8 costs $5.00 input / $25.00 output per 1M tokens, while Qwen3.5 Plus costs $0.40 input / $2.40 output — about a 11x difference on a typical 3:1 input-heavy workload.
How much does a real request cost on Claude Opus 4.8 vs Qwen3.5 Plus?
A request with 10,000 input tokens and 2,000 output tokens costs about $0.10 on Claude Opus 4.8 and $0.0088 on Qwen3.5 Plus. At 100,000 such requests per month that is $10,000 vs $880 — a difference of $9,120 per month.
Which has the bigger context window, Claude Opus 4.8 or Qwen3.5 Plus?
They are equal: both support 1,000,000 tokens of context, roughly 750,000 English words shared between prompt and response.
Do Claude Opus 4.8 and Qwen3.5 Plus count tokens the same way?
Not exactly. Claude Opus 4.8 uses a proprietary tokenizer (counts are estimates) and Qwen3.5 Plus uses a proprietary tokenizer (counts are estimates). The same prompt will tokenize differently, which shifts effective cost per word.