Open-weight models now beat Claude Sonnet 5 as gap closes fast
LegacyRemaster · reddit · 2026-10-16
A Reddit post paired with an Artificial Analysis cost-vs-intelligence chart argues the open-weight vs. frontier picture has shifted sharply:
- Closed SOTA still leads, but open models have now surpassed Sonnet 5 — a leap that previously took months (Sonnet 4.6/3.7 era)
- GLM-5.3-Flash, DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731, Qwen3.8-Flash-Next and Muse Spark Open sit in the best-value quadrant at $0.3–1 per task, vs. $1–5 for Claude Opus 5 / Sonnet 5 high tiers
- The author expected "Spark Open" to match v1.2; properly filtered benchmarks show it's far better
Takeaway: unless you strictly need Sonnet 5 or Astra, skipping paid proprietary models is now entirely feasible; Qwen 4 and GLM may tip the scales further.
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