Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo vs Qwen3-Max Reasoning: which model should you choose?
We compared Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo and Qwen3-Max Reasoning on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo and Qwen3-Max Reasoning are effectively tied on the index average; Qwen3-Max Reasoning 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 Reasoning
Qwen3-Max Reasoning is a frontier model from Alibaba Cloud. It offers a 2,000,000-token context window, costs $18.12 per million input tokens and $81.94 per million output tokens, and averages 85.9 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $18.12 / 1M
- Output
- $81.94 / 1M
- Context
- 2,000,000
- Avg score
- 85.9
- Open weights
- No
Specification comparison
| Spec | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo | Qwen3-Max Reasoning | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $18.37 | $18.12 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $81.65 | $81.94 | A |
| Context window | 1,000,000 | 2,000,000 | B |
| Max output | 65,536 | 8,192 | A |
| Average score | 85.9 | 85.9 | Tie |
| Arena Elo | 1461.7 | 1461.0 | A |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo wins 5, Qwen3-Max Reasoning wins 7, 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 Reasoning | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 87.2 | 88.1 | 0.9 | Qwen3-Max Reasoning |
| GPQA Diamond | 83.7 | 79.8 | 3.9 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo |
| SWE-bench Verified | 75.2 | 75.3 | 0.1 | Qwen3-Max Reasoning |
| HumanEval | 90.4 | 92.6 | 2.2 | Qwen3-Max Reasoning |
| MATH-500 | 88.0 | 93.0 | 5.0 | Qwen3-Max Reasoning |
| AIME 2025 | 87.8 | 83.1 | 4.7 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo |
| LiveCodeBench | 78.9 | 78.0 | 0.9 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo |
| IFEval | 91.4 | 92.2 | 0.8 | Qwen3-Max Reasoning |
| TruthfulQA | 87.7 | 88.8 | 1.1 | Qwen3-Max Reasoning |
| HellaSwag | 93.9 | 91.5 | 2.4 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo |
| MMMU | 81.1 | 82.3 | 1.2 | Qwen3-Max Reasoning |
| Arena Elo | 1461.7 | 1461.0 | 0.7 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo |
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 Reasoning costs about $34.08. Qwen3-Max Reasoning is roughly 0% cheaper than Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Qwen3-Max Reasoning has the larger context window at 2,000,000 tokens, compared with 1,000,000 for Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo wins 5, Qwen3-Max Reasoning wins 7, and 0 are tied. The two models are effectively tied on the index average at 85.9.
The price picture favours Qwen3-Max Reasoning. The context picture favours Qwen3-Max Reasoning. 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 Reasoning; it is cheaper on a blended basis and has the larger context window. Test it on your own traffic before committing.
Choose Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo if
- You need the larger 65,536-token output limit.
Choose Qwen3-Max Reasoning if
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- You need the larger 2,000,000-token context window.
FAQ
Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo better than Qwen3-Max Reasoning?
The two models are effectively tied on the index average at 85.9. The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo wins 5 benchmarks, Qwen3-Max Reasoning wins 7.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo or Qwen3-Max Reasoning?
Qwen3-Max Reasoning is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $34.08 per million tokens, versus $34.19 for Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo.
Which has the larger context window?
Qwen3-Max Reasoning has the larger context window at 2,000,000 tokens. Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo has 1,000,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo is proprietary; Qwen3-Max Reasoning is proprietary.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Qwen3-Max Reasoning; it is cheaper on a blended basis and has the larger context window. Test it on your own traffic before committing.