multimodal model comparison
Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash
Claude Haiku 5.5 and Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash are both current multimodal models, from Anthropic and Alibaba Qwen. Claude Haiku 5.5 is 33% cheaper per 1M input tokens than Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash, $0.10 vs $0.15. Both accept 1,000,000 tokens of context.
Data verified October 12, 2026 · Dataset 2026-10-12
Side by side
Standard-tier prices in effect today. The better value in each row is highlighted.
| Fact | Claude Haiku 5.5 | Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Price per 1M input tokens | $0.10 (better) | $0.15 |
| Price per 1M output tokens | $0.50 | $0.47 (better) |
| Cost of 10M input and 2M output tokens | $2 (better) | $2.44 |
| GPQA Diamond | 89.6% (#26 of 37) | Not measured |
| FrontierMath Tiers 1-3 (v2) | 75.1% (#16 of 37) | Not measured |
| SimpleQA Verified | 23.8% (#31 of 34) | Not measured |
| Provider | Anthropic | Alibaba Qwen |
| Release date | October 7, 2026 | September 20, 2026 |
| Access | API only | API only |
| Context window | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Max output | 128,000 tokens | 131,072 tokens |
| Input | text, image | text, image, audio, video |
| Output | text | text |
Scores:Epoch AI · 2026-10-12
When to choose each
Claude Haiku 5.5
Best for
- High-volume classification, extraction and routing under the 100,000-token line
- Cost-sensitive fan-out steps where a frontier model is overkill
Watch out for
- Priced by prompt length, and it is a cliff rather than a taper: a request whose prompt passes 100,000 tokens is billed at $0.50 input and $2.50 output for the whole request, five times the short rate
- Cache reads and cache writes both count toward that 100,000-token measurement, so a large cached prefix can tip a request into the higher band on its own
- It is the only current Claude model whose 1M window is not priced uniformly; every other 4.6-and-later model bills a 900k request at the same rate as a 9k one
Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash
Best for
- Long audio and video understanding at low cost
- Agent pipelines that must reason over meetings, calls or recorded media
Watch out for
- Output is text only; for spoken replies Alibaba lists a separate realtime variant
- Alibaba's comparisons with Gemini 3.8 Flash are self-reported and have not been reproduced independently here
- The release date is the Alibaba Cloud announcement date, 2026-09-20
Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash FAQ
Which is cheaper, Claude Haiku 5.5 or Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash?
Claude Haiku 5.5 is 33% cheaper per 1M input tokens than Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash, $0.10 vs $0.15. For 10M input and 2M output tokens, Claude Haiku 5.5 costs $2 and Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash $2.44 at standard rates.
Which has the larger context window, Claude Haiku 5.5 or Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash?
Both accept 1,000,000 tokens of context.
Related comparisons
Production evaluation
Choosing between Claude Haiku 5.5 and Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash?
Public benchmarks narrow the shortlist. We run both on your own tasks, data and cost limits, then build the routing and review controls to run the winner in production.
- A head-to-head evaluation on your real workload
- Routing between models by cost and difficulty