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Model comparison

Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Qwen 3.8 Flash Next

Anthropic against Qwen, compared on context, price, and verified benchmark results.

Catalog record checked September 26, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: High — see receipts below

Anthropic

Claude Haiku 4.5

Budget

vs

Qwen

Qwen 3.8 Flash Next

Budget · Open weights

AI model capability comparison
SpecificationClaude Haiku 4.5Qwen 3.8 Flash Next
ProviderAnthropicQwen
TierBudgetBudget
Context window200KWinner: 262K
Max output64KNot verifiedUnverified
Input / 1M tokens$1Winner: $0.15
Output / 1M tokens$5Winner: $0.47
WeightsClosedOpen
ParametersNot disclosedUnverified125B total / 6B active (MoE) + 51B n-gram embedding table
Reasoning levelsextended thinking (budget_tokens)Not verifiedUnverified
Modalitiestext, imagetext, image, video
LicenseNot disclosedUnverifiedqwen-community-1.0
API model idclaude-haiku-4-5-20251001qwen3.8-flash
ReleasedOctober 15, 2025August 26, 2026
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-09-26)16.9Winner: 39.8
SWE-bench Verified (2026-02-17)66.6Not verifiedUnverified
Terminal-Bench (2025-10-15)40.21Not verifiedUnverified

Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. Bold indicates the better figure where one is objectively better. Values we could not confirm from the provider are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.

Benchmark receipts

Where each score comes from, and how far it can be compared across models.

Pricing tiers

Claude Haiku 4.5: Standard $1/$5 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. 200K context (vs 1M on Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5).

Qwen 3.8 Flash Next: Hosted qwen3.8-flash lists $0.15/$0.47 per MTok on Alibaba Cloud Model Studio with a 1M context. The open checkpoint is 262,144 tokens native, extensible to 1M.

BudgetRecord checked September 26, 2026

Claude Haiku 4.5

Claude Haiku 4.5 is Anthropic's fastest, cheapest tier for high-volume classification and extraction.

Best for

  • High-volume classification
  • Routine extraction
  • Latency-sensitive stacks

Watch out

No adaptive thinking (manual extended thinking via budget_tokens only); 200K context. Anthropic lists 2026-10-15 as the earliest possible retirement date, and Haiku 5.5 is announced but not released.

BudgetOpen weightsRecord checked September 26, 2026

Qwen 3.8 Flash Next

Qwen 3.8 Flash Next is Alibaba's experimental preview of the Qwen 4 architecture — very low active parameters plus an unusual n-gram embedding component for cheap long-context.

Best for

  • Early testing of Qwen 4 architecture
  • Cheap high-throughput work
  • Multimodal input

Watch out

Experimental preview; qwen-community-1.0 license is more restrictive than MIT/Apache; benchmark claims are vendor-reported.

When the cheaper one wins

Qwen 3.8 Flash Next is cheaper on output at $0.47 per million tokens against $5 for Claude Haiku 4.5 — about 11×. Use the cheaper tier for classification, extraction, summarisation, and any task where the expensive model’s extra score does not change the accepted output. The expensive one only pays if your hardest task actually fails on the cheap tier. These are standard-tier API rates, excluding batch and cache discounts.

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Evidence confidence: High

How strong and complete the evidence behind this comparison is — not a prediction of which model is better.

  • Pricing verified on both sides — Input and output rates are verified for both models.
  • 2/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: max output, parameter count, reasoning levels.
  • 1 shared named benchmark with differing scores — Measured on: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.
  • Verified within the last 90 days — Newest catalog check was 2 days ago.
  • Both models carry source citations — Each side has at least two catalog sources on record.

Source receipts

Each catalog figure was checked against the provider or an independent second source on the date shown.

Related comparisons

Diving deeper on one model? Claude Haiku 4.5 · Qwen 3.8 Flash Next

Common questions

Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Qwen 3.8 Flash Next

Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.

Is Claude Haiku 4.5 or Qwen 3.8 Flash Next cheaper for input?
Qwen 3.8 Flash Next is cheaper at $0.15 per million input tokens, against $1 for Claude Haiku 4.5 — roughly 6.7× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Claude Haiku 4.5 has tiered pricing: Standard $1/$5 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. 200K context (vs 1M on Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5). Qwen 3.8 Flash Next has tiered pricing: Hosted qwen3.8-flash lists $0.15/$0.47 per MTok on Alibaba Cloud Model Studio with a 1M context. The open checkpoint is 262,144 tokens native, extensible to 1M.
Is Claude Haiku 4.5 or Qwen 3.8 Flash Next cheaper for output?
Qwen 3.8 Flash Next is cheaper at $0.47 per million output tokens, against $5 for Claude Haiku 4.5 — roughly 11× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Claude Haiku 4.5 has tiered pricing: Standard $1/$5 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. 200K context (vs 1M on Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5). Qwen 3.8 Flash Next has tiered pricing: Hosted qwen3.8-flash lists $0.15/$0.47 per MTok on Alibaba Cloud Model Studio with a 1M context. The open checkpoint is 262,144 tokens native, extensible to 1M.
Which has the larger context window, Claude Haiku 4.5 or Qwen 3.8 Flash Next?
Qwen 3.8 Flash Next accepts 262K tokens against 200K for Claude Haiku 4.5. This only matters if you routinely send very long documents or large codebases.
Should I use Claude Haiku 4.5 or Qwen 3.8 Flash Next?
Both sit in the budget tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. Claude Haiku 4.5 suits high-volume classification; Qwen 3.8 Flash Next suits early testing of qwen 4 architecture.
Can I self-host Claude Haiku 4.5 or Qwen 3.8 Flash Next?
Qwen 3.8 Flash Next publishes open weights, but self-hosting and third-party provider access depend on the licence, hardware, serving support, and availability. Claude Haiku 4.5 is a closed model whose supported access paths are controlled by its provider.

Next step

Choosing between them

The verified figures that separate this pair, computed from the catalog rather than restated boilerplate.

  • Input price: Qwen 3.8 Flash Next costs $0.15 per 1M tokens versus $1 for Claude Haiku 4.5 — a 6.7x difference at the headline tier.
  • Context: Qwen 3.8 Flash Next takes 262K against 200K for Claude Haiku 4.5 — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.
  • Deployment: Qwen 3.8 Flash Next publishes weights you can self-host; the other is API-only.
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