Head-to-head · frontier vs frontier

Claude Opus 4.5 Vision vs Qwen3-Max Turbo: which model should you choose?

We compared Claude Opus 4.5 Vision and Qwen3-Max Turbo on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Claude Opus 4.5 Vision has the stronger average benchmark score; Qwen3-Max Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.

Anthropic

Claude Opus 4.5 Vision

Claude Opus 4.5 Vision is a frontier model from Anthropic. It offers a 200,000-token context window, costs $17.70 per million input tokens and $74.84 per million output tokens, and averages 85.9 across the index's benchmark suite.

Input
$17.70 / 1M
Output
$74.84 / 1M
Context
200,000
Avg score
85.9
Open weights
No
Full Claude Opus 4.5 Vision page
Alibaba Cloud

Qwen3-Max Turbo

Qwen3-Max Turbo is a frontier model from Alibaba Cloud. It offers a 1,000,000-token context window, costs $17.70 per million input tokens and $63.95 per million output tokens, and averages 84.7 across the index's benchmark suite.

Input
$17.70 / 1M
Output
$63.95 / 1M
Context
1,000,000
Avg score
84.7
Open weights
No
Full Qwen3-Max Turbo page

Specification comparison

SpecClaude Opus 4.5 VisionQwen3-Max TurboEdge
Input price / 1M$17.70$17.70Tie
Output price / 1M$74.84$63.95B
Context window200,0001,000,000B
Max output32,768128,000B
Average score85.984.7A
Arena Elo1452.21456.9B
Open weightsNoNoTie

Benchmark comparison

Claude Opus 4.5 Vision wins 9, Qwen3-Max Turbo wins 2, and 1 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.

BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.5 VisionQwen3-Max TurboGapWinner
MMLU-Pro86.986.80.1Claude Opus 4.5 Vision
GPQA Diamond80.778.32.4Claude Opus 4.5 Vision
SWE-bench Verified77.775.91.8Claude Opus 4.5 Vision
HumanEval88.292.54.3Qwen3-Max Turbo
MATH-50091.991.90.0Tie
AIME 202585.481.24.2Claude Opus 4.5 Vision
LiveCodeBench80.176.83.3Claude Opus 4.5 Vision
IFEval92.692.10.5Claude Opus 4.5 Vision
TruthfulQA86.986.30.6Claude Opus 4.5 Vision
HellaSwag91.490.80.6Claude Opus 4.5 Vision
MMMU83.278.84.4Claude Opus 4.5 Vision
Arena Elo1452.21456.94.7Qwen3-Max Turbo

Price analysis

On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Claude Opus 4.5 Vision costs about $31.98 per million tokens and Qwen3-Max Turbo costs about $29.26. Qwen3-Max Turbo is roughly 9% cheaper than Claude Opus 4.5 Vision. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.

Qwen3-Max Turbo has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens, compared with 200,000 for Claude Opus 4.5 Vision. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.

Verdict

Across 12 shared benchmarks, Claude Opus 4.5 Vision wins 9, Qwen3-Max Turbo wins 2, and 1 are tied. On the index average, Claude Opus 4.5 Vision leads Qwen3-Max Turbo by 1.2 points (85.9 versus 84.7).

The price picture favours Qwen3-Max Turbo. The context picture favours Qwen3-Max Turbo. Those two dimensions often matter more than a few benchmark points once a model is good enough for the task.

If you need a single default, start with Claude Opus 4.5 Vision for quality-sensitive work and Qwen3-Max Turbo for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.

Choose Claude Opus 4.5 Vision if

  • You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.

Choose Qwen3-Max Turbo if

  • Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
  • You need the larger 1,000,000-token context window.
  • You need the larger 128,000-token output limit.

FAQ

Is Claude Opus 4.5 Vision better than Qwen3-Max Turbo?

On the index average, Claude Opus 4.5 Vision leads Qwen3-Max Turbo by 1.2 points (85.9 versus 84.7). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Claude Opus 4.5 Vision wins 9 benchmarks, Qwen3-Max Turbo wins 2.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.5 Vision or Qwen3-Max Turbo?

Qwen3-Max Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $29.26 per million tokens, versus $31.98 for Claude Opus 4.5 Vision.

Which has the larger context window?

Qwen3-Max Turbo has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens. Claude Opus 4.5 Vision has 200,000 tokens.

Are these models open weights?

Claude Opus 4.5 Vision is proprietary; Qwen3-Max Turbo is proprietary.

Which should I choose for production?

If you need a single default, start with Claude Opus 4.5 Vision for quality-sensitive work and Qwen3-Max Turbo for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.

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