The Right-Sized LLM Benchmark Cheapest LLM that's good enough.

Qwen 3.8 Max at a glance

Good enough on 9/52 tasks at the 90% bar. Best value on 0 tasks. Doesn't qualify on any: Social & Promotional Content.

Provider
Alibaba Cloud (DashScope)
Model name
qwen3.8-max
Cost mode:
Qualifies on
9 / 52 tasks (at 90% bar)
Best value on
0 tasks

Cost vs quality across all tasks

0%25%50%75%100%8910Quality score (8–10)Cost-efficiency vs best value (1.0 = best value)Multi Perspective Decision Synthesis — quality 8.13, 39.6x the cost of the best-value good-enough optionTopic Section Assignment — quality 8.05, 48.3x the cost of the best-value good-enough optionResearch Query Validation — quality 8.58, 60.2x the cost of the best-value good-enough optionEngagement Opportunity Triage — quality 8.47, 56.5x the cost of the best-value good-enough optionLanguage Identification — quality 10.01, 42.8x the cost of the best-value good-enough optionSocial Post Portfolio Selection — quality 8.17, 134.9x the cost of the best-value good-enough optionVoice Profile Generation — quality 9.58, 77.8x the cost of the best-value good-enough optionBatch Text Translation — quality 8.72, 120.1x the cost of the best-value good-enough optionStructured Content Summarization — quality 8.36, 25.5x the cost of the best-value good-enough option

within ~1.3× of the best-value model · 1.3–2× · >2× · ★ this model is the best-value pick on that task. Top-right = best quadrant. Only tasks where this model qualifies at the 90% bar are plotted.

Per-task breakdown

TaskCategoryQuality (% of best)ConfidenceOverpay
Structured Content SummarizationContent Summarization & Synthesis90%MEDIUM25x
Multi Perspective Decision SynthesisFinancial Analysis & Trading Decisions92%HIGH40x
Language IdentificationRelevance, Classification & Matching100%RANKED43x
Topic Section AssignmentTopic Organization & Clustering93%MEDIUM48x
Engagement Opportunity TriageRelevance, Classification & Matching96%HIGH56x
Research Query ValidationInfrastructure & Utility98%MEDIUM60x
Voice Profile GenerationLong-form Content Generation97%HIGH78x
Batch Text TranslationInfrastructure & Utility93%HIGH120x
Social Post Portfolio SelectionRelevance, Classification & Matching93%HIGH135x

Overpay — how much more you pay by running this model instead of the best-value model that clears the quality bar on that task (marked ★). "16x" means you overpay 16× — the same output for 16× the best-value good-enough option; ★ means this model is that option (no overpayment). Confidence — how sure we are about the quality score (more judgments + more agreement = higher confidence): RANKED many independent judges scored this model's outputs and their agreement is very high (most confident) — HIGH many judges have scored it and they mostly agree (well-pinned) — MEDIUM enough judges have weighed in to publish, but they disagree more than we'd like (treat with a small grain of salt). LOW-confidence cells are hidden everywhere on the site. See the methodology for the exact thresholds.