💰 Unit Cost Winner Qwen 3.8 27B $0.20/1M in · $0.60/1M out
⚡ Latency & Speed Winner Qwen 3.8 27B 120ms TTFT · 140 tok/s
💻 Coding (SWE) Winner GPT-5 74.9% SWE-bench · 95.8% HumanEval
🧠 STEM Reasoning Winner GPT-5 85.4% GPQA · 98% MATH-500

Which model is better: GPT-5 or Qwen 3.8 27B?

Qwen 3.8 27B is 92.0% cheaper for input tokens ($0.20 vs. $2.50 per 1M tokens) and $0.60 vs. $10.00 for output tokens (12.5x cost advantage). In terms of operational performance, Qwen 3.8 27B delivers lower response latency at 120ms TTFT (220ms faster than GPT-5) with 140 vs. 105 tok/s throughput. GPT-5 leads coding evaluations at 74.9% SWE-bench Verified vs. 58.4% for Qwen 3.8 27B and 85.4% vs. 68.0% on GPQA Diamond.
Verified daily via automated API latency tests and official documentation.

Verified Performance & Unit Economics Delta (12 Dimensions)

Daily synchronized metrics across token pricing, prompt cache economics, latency, throughput, and 5 capability benchmarks.

Metric / Dimension GPT-5 Qwen 3.8 27B Net Delta / Advantage
Input Cost / 1M Tokens $2.50 $0.20 Qwen 3.8 27B is 12.5x cheaper
Output Cost / 1M Tokens $10.00 $0.60 Qwen 3.8 27B (94.0% lower)
Prompt Cache Read / 1M $0.625 $0.050 Qwen 3.8 27B is 12.5x cheaper
Prompt Cache Write / 1M $2.50 $0.20 Qwen 3.8 27B is 12.5x cheaper
Context Window (Max Output) 410k (128k out) 131k (16k out) GPT-5 (3.1x larger context)
Avg TTFT Response Latency 340ms 120ms Qwen 3.8 27B (220ms faster)
Generation Speed (Throughput) 105 tok/s 140 tok/s Qwen 3.8 27B (+35 tok/s faster)
SWE-bench Verified (Coding) 74.9% 58.4% GPT-5 (+16.5% lead)
GPQA Diamond (PhD STEM) 85.4% 68% GPT-5 (+17.4% lead)
MMLU-Pro (Multi-Discipline) 90.8% 81.2% GPT-5 (+9.6% lead)
MATH-500 (Quantitative Logic) 98% 86.4% GPT-5 (+11.6% lead)
Inference Value Score (IVR) 59.2 / 100 74.9 / 100 Qwen 3.8 27B (+15.7 pts)

Interactive Monthly Token Economics & ROI Forecaster

Model production workloads across prompt, completion, and cached context tokens, or switch models on the fly.

25.0M Tokens
500K 50M 250M 500M+
5.0M Tokens
100K 25M 75M 150M+
50% Cached
0% (Uncached) 25% 50% (Typical Agent) 95% Max

Estimated Monthly Spend

GPT-5 $89.06

$2.50/1M in · $10.00/1M out

Prompt Cache: $0.625/1M read · $2.50/1M write

Qwen 3.8 27B $6.13

$0.20/1M in · $0.60/1M out

Prompt Cache: $0.050/1M read · $0.20/1M write

Projected Monthly Cost Reduction
$82.94 / mo
(93.1% lower cost with Qwen 3.8 27B)
Open Full Matchup Analysis →
A

When to Choose GPT-5

Choose GPT-5 (OpenAI) for complex enterprise automation, full-stack software engineering, multimodal agent orchestration, and scientific synthesis — offering a 409k context window, 340ms TTFT, and $2.50/1M input pricing ($0.625/1M cached reads).

B

When to Choose Qwen 3.8 27B

Choose Qwen 3.8 27B (Alibaba Cloud) for high-performance 27B open weights optimized for local deployment, code generation, and low-latency production pipelines — offering a 131k context window, 120ms TTFT, and $0.20/1M input pricing ($0.050/1M cached reads).

Related Questions & Decision Factors

Which is cheaper: GPT-5 or Qwen 3.8 27B?

Qwen 3.8 27B is cheaper at $0.20/1M input tokens ($0.60/1M output) compared to $2.50/1M input ($10.00/1M output) for GPT-5.

Which model has lower TTFT latency and higher tok/s throughput: GPT-5 or Qwen 3.8 27B?

Qwen 3.8 27B delivers faster first-token latency at 120ms TTFT (140 tok/s throughput) compared to 340ms TTFT (105 tok/s) for GPT-5.

How do GPT-5 and Qwen 3.8 27B compare on SWE-bench coding and GPQA Diamond reasoning?

On SWE-bench Verified software engineering, GPT-5 scores 74.9% versus 58.4% for Qwen 3.8 27B. On GPQA Diamond graduate-level STEM reasoning, GPT-5 scores 85.4% versus 68% for Qwen 3.8 27B (and 98% vs 86.4% on MATH-500).

When should you choose GPT-5?

Choose GPT-5 (OpenAI) for complex enterprise automation, full-stack software engineering, multimodal agent orchestration, and scientific synthesis — offering a 409k context window, 340ms TTFT, and $2.50/1M input pricing ($0.625/1M cached reads).

When should you choose Qwen 3.8 27B?

Choose Qwen 3.8 27B (Alibaba Cloud) for high-performance 27B open weights optimized for local deployment, code generation, and low-latency production pipelines — offering a 131k context window, 120ms TTFT, and $0.20/1M input pricing ($0.050/1M cached reads).

Explore High-Priority Related Model Matchups