Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo vs Qwen3-Max Pro: which model should you choose?
We compared Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo and Qwen3-Max Pro on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Qwen3-Max Pro has the stronger average benchmark score; Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo is a frontier model from Anthropic. It offers a 1,000,000-token context window, costs $18.37 per million input tokens and $81.65 per million output tokens, and averages 85.9 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $18.37 / 1M
- Output
- $81.65 / 1M
- Context
- 1,000,000
- Avg score
- 85.9
- Open weights
- No
Qwen3-Max Pro
Qwen3-Max Pro is a frontier model from Alibaba Cloud. It offers a 400,000-token context window, costs $18.87 per million input tokens and $84.39 per million output tokens, and averages 86.2 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $18.87 / 1M
- Output
- $84.39 / 1M
- Context
- 400,000
- Avg score
- 86.2
- Open weights
- No
Specification comparison
| Spec | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo | Qwen3-Max Pro | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $18.37 | $18.87 | A |
| Output price / 1M | $81.65 | $84.39 | A |
| Context window | 1,000,000 | 400,000 | A |
| Max output | 65,536 | 8,192 | A |
| Average score | 85.9 | 86.2 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1461.7 | 1466.4 | B |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo wins 4, Qwen3-Max Pro wins 8, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo | Qwen3-Max Pro | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 87.2 | 88.7 | 1.5 | Qwen3-Max Pro |
| GPQA Diamond | 83.7 | 80.0 | 3.7 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo |
| SWE-bench Verified | 75.2 | 75.6 | 0.4 | Qwen3-Max Pro |
| HumanEval | 90.4 | 92.1 | 1.7 | Qwen3-Max Pro |
| MATH-500 | 88.0 | 91.8 | 3.8 | Qwen3-Max Pro |
| AIME 2025 | 87.8 | 85.4 | 2.4 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo |
| LiveCodeBench | 78.9 | 81.0 | 2.1 | Qwen3-Max Pro |
| IFEval | 91.4 | 93.2 | 1.8 | Qwen3-Max Pro |
| TruthfulQA | 87.7 | 88.6 | 0.9 | Qwen3-Max Pro |
| HellaSwag | 93.9 | 92.4 | 1.5 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo |
| MMMU | 81.1 | 79.5 | 1.6 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo |
| Arena Elo | 1461.7 | 1466.4 | 4.7 | Qwen3-Max Pro |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo costs about $34.19 per million tokens and Qwen3-Max Pro costs about $35.25. Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo is roughly 3% cheaper than Qwen3-Max Pro. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens, compared with 400,000 for Qwen3-Max Pro. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo wins 4, Qwen3-Max Pro wins 8, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Qwen3-Max Pro leads Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo by 0.3 points (86.2 versus 85.9).
The price picture favours Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo. The context picture favours Claude Sonnet 4.5 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 Qwen3-Max Pro for quality-sensitive work and Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.
Choose Claude Sonnet 4.5 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 65,536-token output limit.
Choose Qwen3-Max Pro if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
FAQ
Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo better than Qwen3-Max Pro?
On the index average, Qwen3-Max Pro leads Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo by 0.3 points (86.2 versus 85.9). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo wins 4 benchmarks, Qwen3-Max Pro wins 8.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo or Qwen3-Max Pro?
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $34.19 per million tokens, versus $35.25 for Qwen3-Max Pro.
Which has the larger context window?
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens. Qwen3-Max Pro has 400,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo is proprietary; Qwen3-Max Pro is proprietary.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Qwen3-Max Pro for quality-sensitive work and Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.